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WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 



OR, 



Jjtfo Pain Reasons for Soinins tfjc 
3&oman Catfjolic Communion. 



BY 

C F. B. A. 



ST. AUGUSTINE, A.D. 400 : " Ye (Donatists) are not in the mountains of Sion, 
because you are not in the City seated on a hill, which has this sure mark, that it 
cannot be hidden. It is, therefore, known to all nations : now the party of Donatus 
is unknown to many nations : it is not, therefore, that city." L. ii.. cont. Lit. 
Petilian., n. 239 (al. 104). 

ORIGEN, A.D. 210: "We are not to give heed to those who say, Behold, Jiere 
is Christ, but show Him not in THE CHURCH, which is filled with brightness from 
the East even unto the West ; which is filled with true light, is the pillar and 
ground of the truth, in which as a whole is the whole advent of the Son of Man, 
who saith to all men, throughout the universe, ' Behold, I am with you all the days 
of life, even unto the consummation of the world.'" Tom. iii., Com. in Matt., 
Tract, xxx. n. 46. 



(Efcftfon, 

WITH AN ENLARGED APPENDIX AND ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



EDINBURGH: 
PRINTED AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS. 

iSSi. 



ST. iRENyEUS, Bishop of Lyons, A.D. 178 : " In the Church God hath placed 
Apostles, Prophet?, Doctors, and every other work of the Spirit, of which all they 
are not partakers who do not hasten to the Church, but by their evil sentiment 
and most flagrant conduct, defraud themselves of life. For where the Church is, 
there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church 
and every grace : but the Spirit is truth." Adv. Hccr., 1. iii. c. 24, n. 2. 

" He will judge all those who cause schisms ; men destitute of the love of 
God, and who have in view their own interest and not the oneness of the Church ; 
and who, on account of slight and exaggerated causes, rend and divide, and so far 
as in them lies, destroy the great and glorious Body of Christ ; men who have 
peace on their lips, but war in their actions ; who truly strain at a gnat, but 
swallow a camel. But no reformation can be effected by them so great as is the 
perniciousness of schism." /., 1. iv. c. 33, n. 7. 






PREFACE. 



THE question which forms the title of this little work is one 
that must admit of very easy solution, seeing that the object, 
for which our Lord established His Church on earth, rendered 
it necessary that the MARKS which were to distinguish her 
in all ages as the Divinely commissioned TEACHER OF THE 
NATIONS should be plain and simple, and easily recognis- 
able by those for whom His Religion itself was specially 
adapted and designed the poor and ignorant, who constitute 
the great bulk of mankind. 

Learned research, or anxious inquiry regarding the doctrines 
taught by the various and conflicting Christian communities, 
cannot be necessary for those who simply want to discover 
that Church which is the one unerring TEACHER appointed by 
God ; and the object of the following pages is to show, in as 
simple and brief a manner as possible, that the principal marks 
and characteristics of this Church, as plainly laid down in the 
Scriptures received by Protestants themselves, are, by a refer- 
ence to notorious and acknowledged facts, and by the testi- 
monies of Protestant or other hostile historians, whose works 
are accessible to all, so clearly shown to be recognisable in 
the Roman Catholic Church, and in her alone, as entirely to 
preclude the necessity for entering upon any of those irre- 
levant, tedious, and interminable controversies into which 
Protestant disputants are always desirous to draw off the 
attention of their readers. 

The texts of Scripture are generally quoted from the 
Authorised Protestant Version ; and the historians (such as 
HALLAM, MILMAN, FROUDE, RANKE, NEANDER, GUIZOT, 
RENAN) or other authors, whose works have been freely cited 
in the Notes or Appendix, are all so well known for their strong 
Protestant or anti-Catholic sympathies, that whatever testi- 
monies, at all favourable to the Catholic Church or religion in 
the past, may be found in their writings, will be acknowledged 
by all impartial persons to have a value, weight, and import- 
ance peculiar to themselves, and such as the statements of few 
other authors would in these days be likely to possess. 

C. F. B. A. 



WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 



I. THE Object, for which the Redeemer established His 
Church or Kingdom on earth, was the conversion of the 
world to Christianity, the preservation and propagation of His 
One true Faith and Religion, Universally, in regard to Time 
and Place: l 

"I," He declared, "am r the LIGHT OF THE WORLD. . . . For this 
cause came I into the world, that I should BEAR WITNESS UNTO THE 
TRUTH" (John iii. 17, viii. 12, xviii. 37. Comp. Luke ii. 32 ; Acts ii. 47, 
xiii. 47, xvii. 30 ; I Tim. ii. 4). 

" Now is the judgment of this world : NOW SHALL THE PRINCE OF 
THIS WORLD BE CAST OUT. 2 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, WILL 

1 The truth of this proposition is admitted by the ablest Protestant writers, 
e.g., by Bishop PEARSON, in his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed, Art. ix., and 
by Bishop BUTLER, in his celebrated Analogy of Religion. The last-named writer 
says : " In order to continue it (Christianity), and carry it on successively through- 
out all ages, a VISIBLE CHURCH was established. Had Christ and His Apostles 
only taught, and by miracles proved, religion to their contemporaries, the benefits 
of their instructions would have reached but to a small part of mankind. Chris- 
tianity must have been in a great degree sunken and forgotten in a very few ages. 
To prevent this, appears to have been one reason why a Visible Church was insti- 
tuted ; to be, like a city upon a hill, a standing memorial to the world of the duty 
which we owe our Maker ; to call men continually, both by example and instruction, 
to attend to it, and, by the form of religion ever before their eyes, remind them of 
the reality ; to be the repository of the oracles of God ; to hold up the light of 
revelation in aid to that of nature, and propagate it throughout all generations to 
the end of the world" (Analogy, Part ii. chap. i. sect. 7). And again: "He 
founded a Church, to be to mankind a standing memorial of religion and invita- 
tion to it ; which He promised to be with always, even to the end " (2b. chap. v. 
sect. 6). 

2 "Meaning," says the Anglican commentator BLOOMFIELD, "that now is the 
Prince of this world . . . about to be deposed from his rule, by the abolition of 
idolatry and superstition, and the introduction of true religion" (Note in loc.). 
"After the death of Christ the casting out began, and its first-fruits were the 
coming in of the Gentiles into the Church." ALFORD (in loc.\ Comp. 
Rev. xiv. 6-8. 



( 6 ) 

DRAW ALL MEN UNTO MYSELF " (John xii. 31,32. Comp. Rom. xvi. 20 ; 
Rev. xiv. 6-8). 

" MANY shall come, from the East and West, and from the North and 
South, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob IN THE 
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 1 But the children of the Kingdom [the uncon- 
verted Jews] shall be cast out into outer darkness" (Matt. viii. u, 12 ; 
Luke xiii. 29. Comp. Rom. ix. 6-8, 24, x. 20, 21, xi. 12, 15, 25). 

" The Kingdom of God is COME UNTO YOU [JEWS]. . . . The Kingdom 
of God is [ALREADY] AMONG YOU : . . . The Kingdom of God shall 
be taken from you, and GIVEN TO A NATION BRINGING FORTH THE 
FRUITS THEREOF" (Matt. xii. 28 ; Luke xvii. 21 ; Matt. xxi. 43. 
Comp. Acts xiii. 46, 47, xxviii. 28; Rom. x. and xi. j Coloss. i. 6, 13; 
Rom. iv. 13, 1 6). 

" Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets : I am 
not come to destroy, but TO FULFIL. The Law and the Prophets were 

until John : SINCE THAT TIME THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS PREACHED, 
AND EVERY MAN PRESSETH INTO IT" (Matt. V. 17 Luke xvi. l6. Comp. 

Matt. xi. n, 12). 

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a GRAIN OF MUSTARD-SEED, 2 
which a man took and sowed in his field : which indeed is the least of 
all seeds ; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and 

BECOMETH A TREE, AND SHOOTETH OUT GREAT BRANCHES ; SO THAT 
THE BIRDS OF THE AIR COME AND LODGE UNDER THE SHADOW 

THEREOF. . . . The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto LEAVEN, which a 

1 Throughout the Gospels, the most common title given to the Visible Church 
of Christ is that of "THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN " or " OF GOD ; " a Kingdom, 
that is to say, "not of this zvartd" (John xviii. 36), in its Origin and Object, but 
heavenly and divine. Besides the texts above quoted, see Matt. iii. 2 ; Mark i. 14 ; 
Matt. iv. 17, 23; Luke viii. I ; Matt. x. 7; Lnke ix. 2, II, 27, x. 9, xi. 2O, 
xvii. 21 ; Matt. xxii. 2, xxv. I, xiii. n, 24, 41 ; John iii. 3, 5, c. 

2 Dr. TRENCH, Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, says : " His comparison of 
the growth of His Kingdom to that of a tree, must have been one with which 
many of His hearers were already familiar from the Scriptures of the Old Tes- 
tament. The growth of a worldly kingdom had been set forth under this 
image (Dan. iv. 10-12; Ezech. xxxi. 3-9), that also of the Kingdom of God, 
(Ezech. xvii. 22-24 J P S - Ixxx. 8). A mustard-seed is here chosen, . . . not with 
reference to its ultimate greatness, but to the proportion between the smallness 
of the seed and the greatness of the plant which unfolds itself therefrom. . . . 
What He desired to set before His disciples, was not merely that His Kingdom 
should be glorious, but that it should be glorious despite its weak, and slight, and 
despised beginnings. ... In the birds flocking to the boughs of the mustard-tree 
when it had grown great, and there finding shelter and food, we are to recognise 
a prophecy of the refuge and defence that should be for all men in the Church : 
how that multitudes should hither resort, finding there protection from worldly 
oppression, as well as satisfaction for all the needs and wants of their souls" (On 
the Parables, pp. 105, 109, 6th edit.). 

On the Parables of the LEAVEN and the NET, Dr. TRENCH says: "The 
Parable of the Leaven is concerning the] Kingdom of God, which ' cometh not 



( 7 ) 

woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, UNTIL THE WHOLE WAS 
LEAVENED. . . . The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a NET, that was 
cast into the sea, and GATHERED OF EVERY KIND " (Matt. xiii. 31-33, 47 ; 
Mark iv. 31, 32 ; Luke xiii. 19, 21). 

"This gospel of the Kingdom SHALL BE PREACHED IN ALL THE 
WORLD, FOR A WITNESS UNTO ALL NATIONS [ " FOR OBEDIENCE UNTO 
THE FAITH IN ALL NATIONS," Rom. i. 5], and then shall the end come" 
(Matt. xxiv. 14. Comp. Rom. xvi. 26; i Cor. xv. 24, 25). 

"YE ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD : A CITY THAT IS SET ON A 

HILL CANNOT BE HID" (Matt. v. 14. Comp. Heb. xii. 22; Isai. Ix. 

i, 3, 14). 

"I have ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and 
THAT YOUR FRUIT SHOULD REMAIN " (John XV. 1 6. Comp. Acts xiii. 

47, xxviii. 28 ; Rom. i. 13, xv. 9-19 ; Co loss. i. 6). 
"THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH SHALL ABIDE WITH YOU FOR EVER: HE 

SHALL GUIDE YOU INTO ALL TRUTH" (John xiv. 17, xvi. 13). 

"As THE FATHER HATH SENT ME, EVEN so SEND I You. 1 . . . ALL 

POWER IS GIVEN UNTO ME IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH : GO YE, THERE- 
FORE, AND TEACH (MAKE DISCIPLES OF) ALL NATIONS ; BAPTIZING 
THEM IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE 

HOLY GHOST : TEACHING THEM TO OBSERVE ALL THINGS WHAT- 
SOEVER I HAVE COMMANDED YOU : AND LO ! I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS, 
EVEN UNTO THE END OF THE WORLD" (John XX. 21 ; Matt, xxviii. 
1 8-20). 

" Go ye into THE WHOLE WORLD, and PREACH THE GOSPEL 2 TO 

with observation ; ' this [of the mustard-seed] is concerning that same Kingdom, 
as it displays itself openly, and cannot be hid ; that declares the intensive, this 
the extensive development of the gospel. . . . They have, indeed, this in 
common, that they describe the small and slight beginnings, the gradiial progress, 
and the final marvellotis increase of the CJmrch or how, to use another image, 
the stone cut out without hands should become a great mountain, and fill the 
whole earth (Dan. ii. 34, 35). ... This parable [of the Net\ contains a pro- 
phecy of the "wide reach and potent operation of the gospel. The kingdom of 
heaven should henceforth be a net cast into the broad stream of the whole world, 
and gathering or drawing together some out of every kindred, and tongue, and 
people, and nation " (On the Parables, pp. 104, 135). 

1 None have a right to PREACH without a lawful MISSION. "How," says 
St. Paul, "shall they preach, except they be sentV (Rom. x. 15). Those who 
"assume this honour unto themselves " (Heb. v. 4) are guilty of the sin of Korah 
(see Numb. xvi. 3 seq. ; Jude n. Comp. Jerem. xxiii. 21). Our Lord Himself 
constantly appealed to His own Divine Mission (John vii. 16, 28, 29, xii. 44, 
49, xvii. 3, &c.), which Mission He imparted to the Apostles (Luke x. 16 ; 
John xvii. 1 8, xx. 21), and the Apostles transmitted to their Successors the 
whole Body of legitimate Pastors of the One true Church throughout all ages. 
(See Acts xiii. 2-4, xx. 28; 2 Tim. i. 6, II, ii. 2; Titus i. 5; Ephes. iv. 
H-I3-) 

2 Thus was " the Prince of this world " to be deposed from his rule. He had 
" seduced the whole world" into idolatry (Rev. xii. 9 ) ; and therefore it was "into 



( 8 ) 

EVERY CREATURE. He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved ; 
but he that believeth not, shall be condemned" (Mark xvi. 15, 16. 
Comp. Rom. x. 14-18). 

" I will give UNTO THEE (PETER) THE KEYS " [the symbol of Supreme 
Government. Comp. Isai. xxii. 22, ix. 6 ; Rev. iii. 7] " OF THE 
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN ; AND WHATSOEVER THOU SHALT BIND ON 

EARTH, SHALL BE BOUND IN HEAVEN ; AND WHATSOEVER THOU SHALT 
LOOSE ON EARTH, IT SHALL BE LOOSED ALSO IN HEAVEN " {Matt. 

xvi. 19). 

" I appoint unto YOU [My Apostles] a Kingdom, as My Father also 
hath appointed unto ME ; that ye may eat and drink at My table in My 
Kingdom, and SIT ON THRONES, JUDGING THE TWELVE TRIBES OF 
ISRAEL" 1 (Luke xxii. 29, 30). 

" Whatsoever YE shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven ; and 
whatsoever YE shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven " (Matt. 
xviii. 1 8). 

the whole world" that the CHURCH of Christ was commanded to "go; " because 
it was through the instrumentality of that preaching, "by which faith cometh" 
(Rom. x. 14-17) that the Gentiles were to be " turned from darkness unto light, 
from the power of Satan unto God" and to be "translated into the Kingdom of 
His dear Son" (Acts xxvi. 18; Coloss. i. 13). 

By "the world" the Empire of HEATHEN ROME (referred to by St. Luke as 
co-extensive with "the whole world" Luke ii. i) was specially signified. In Rev. 
xiii. 7, this Empire is spoken of as extending over "all kindreds, and tongues, 
and nations" ( tl peoples, and multitudes t and nations, and tongues" Rev. xvii. 
15 ); and upon its overthrow, and the establishment of the Church of Christ in 
its place, the Saints and Angels rejoice that " the kingdoms of this world are 
become the Kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ" (Rev. xi. 15). After this, 
Satan is said to be bound for a thousand years ; i.e., his power as " Prince of this 
world " has been broken by the fall of Paganism in the Roman Empire. He can 
no longer seduce the nations by making them worship idols. 

With the words, " Now shall the Prince of this world be cast out" (John xii. 
31), may be compared St. Paul's declaration to the Roman Church : " The God 
of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly " (Rom. xvi. 20). Both pro- 
mises evidently referred to the overthrow of Paganism, and the near-at-hand 
conversion to Christianity of the great Heathen Empire of Rome (comp. Rev. 
xiv. 6-8). 

The Protestant reader may refer to PALEY'S Evidences of Christianity, part ii. 
ch. ix. sect. I, for a short account of the rapid propagation of the Christian 
faith, and the conversion of the Empire under Constantine in the fourth 
century. 

1 " The twelve tribes of Israel" i.e., the spiritual Israel, the whole Church, 
converted Gentiles as well as converted Jews ; the former being "grafted in 
among" the latter, and "all baptized into one Body" (Rom. xi. 17 ; I Cor. xii. 
13 ; Galat. iii. 27-29 ; Ephes. iii. 6). Hence St. Paul calls the whole Christian 
Church " the Israel of God" (Galat. vi. 16), "the commonwealth of Israel" 
(Ephes. ii. 12), declaring all whether Jews or Gentiles who had been " bap- 
tized into Christ" to be "Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" 



( 9 ) 

" Not for these only do I pray, but for them also who shall believe on 
Me through their word : THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE [BODY OR 
SOCIETY], IN ORDER THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE THAT THOU 
HAST SENT ME ; . . . THAT THEY MAY BE MADE PERFECT IN OXE [iVa 

&<nv TereXetay^j/ot els v THAT THEY MAY BE PERFECTLY UNITED IN OXE 

BODY OR SOCIETY], AND THAT THE WORLD MAY [thereby] KNOW 
THAT THOU HAST SENT ME" (John xvii. 21, 22). 

" He (Caiaphas) prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation ; and 
not for that nation only ; but that also HE SHOULD GATHER TOGETHER 
IN ONE [iVo, cwaydyg cis fr, THAT HE SHOULD COLLECT INTO ONE 

PEOPLE OR KINGDOM] THE CHILDREN OF GOD THAT WERE SCATTERED 
ABROAD " (John xi. 52). 

" Other sheep [the Gentiles] I have, which are not of this Fold : them 
also I must bring [into it], and THEY SHALL HEAR MY VOICE ; AND 

THERE SHALL BE ONE FOLD AND ONE SHEPHERD " (John x. l6. 
Comp. Acts xiii. 47, xxviii. 28 ; Ephes. ii. 14 seq., iii. 6). 

" There is ONE BODY, and One Spirit, . . . One Lord, ONE FAITH, 
One Baptism. . . . And He gave some [to be] Apostles, . . . and some 
Pastors and Teachers ; FOR THE PERFECTING OF THE SAINTS, FOR THE 
WORK OF THE MINISTRY, FOR THE EDIFICATION OF THE BODY OF 
CHRIST ; UNTIL WE ALL COME INTO THE UNITY OF THE FAITH, AND 
OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SON OF GOD, UNTO A PERFECT MAN ; 
. . . THAT HENCEFORTH WE BE NO MORE CHILDREN, TOSSED TO AND 
FRO, AND CARRIED ABOUT WITH EVERY WIND OF DOCTRINE, BY THE 
SLEIGHT OF MEN, AND CUNNING CRAFTINESS, WHEREBY THEY LIE IN 

WAIT TO DECEIVE BUT SPEAKING THE TRUTH [aXrjdevovres maintaining 

and professing the true faith] IN CHARITY, MAY GROW UP INTO HIM 

IN ALL THINGS, WHICH IS THE HEAD, EVEN CHRIST " (EpJlCS. iv. 

4,5, "-IS)- 

" Christ is the Head of THE CHURCH ; and He is the Saviour of THE 
BODY, . . . His BODY, WHICH is THE CHURCH" (Ephes. v. 23 ; Coloss. 
i. 24). 

"We are ALL BAPTIZED INTO ONE BODY/ whether Jews or Gentiles, 

(Rom. ix. 8, 24, iv. II, 16 ; Galat. iii. 7, 9, 29). St. Peter, in like manner, 
applies to the whole body of the faithful the very titles that had formerly been 
given to the Jewish people ; calling them " a Chosen generation, a royal priesthood, 
an holy nation, a peculiar people ; that they should show forth the praises of Him 
who had called them out of darkness into His marvellous light " (Exod. xix. 5, 6 ; 
I Pet. ii. 9. Comp. Ephes. ii. 19, 21 ; Heb. xii. 22, 28). 

1 That the Visible Church is signified under the title of "Body of Christ" is 
evident from the fact that, 1st, all THE BAPTIZED become members of it (i Cor. 
xii. 13. Comp. Acts\\. 41, 47) ; 2dly t these members have a " necessary " depend- 
ence on one another and on the whole body ; they perform various outward and 
visible functions (Rom. xii. 4-8), and hold external as well as internal communion ; 
so that "when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, or one member 
be honoured, all the members rejoice -with it" (i Cor. xii. 15-26). 3^/y, St. Paul 
speaks of the reception of the EUCHARIST as a necessary bond and evidence of 



whether bond or free ; " and " God hath tempered the Body together, 

. . . THAT THERE SHOULD BE NO SCHISM IN THE BODY. . . . For as 

the [natural] body is one, and hath many members, and all the members 
of that one body, being many, are one body ; so also is Christ. . . . Now 
ye are the Body of Christ, and members in particular ; . . . MANY 

MEMBERS, YET BUT ONE BODY. . . . IS CHRIST DIVIDED ?" (l Cor. xii. 

12, 13, 20, 24, 25, 27, i. 13. Comp. Rom. xii. 4, 5 ; Ephes. ii. 14, 15, 
iii. 6, c.). 

" THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD [is] THE PILLAR AND FOUNDA- 
TION OF THE TRUTH" 1 (i Tim. iii. 15). 

" Unto Him be glory IN THE CHURCH, by Jesus Christ, throughout 
all ages, world without end" (Ephes. iii. 21). 

" Thou art PETER (Chipha), and UPON THIS ROCK (Chipha) I WILL 
BUILD MY CHURCH, AND THE GATES OF HELL pitfXat '5ou the 
Powers of Darkness, Satan and his hosts] SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST 
IT. And unto thee will I give the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven," 
&c.(Matt. xvi. 17, 1 8). 

" HE THAT HEARETH YOU, HEARETH ME ; and he that despiseth YOU, 
despiseth ME, and he that despiseth ME, despiseth Him that sent ME" 
(Luke x. 1 6). 

" If he neglect to HEAR THE CHURCH, let him be unto thee as an 
heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you : WHATSOEVER 

membership: "We, being many, are One Bread, One Body, because we all 
partake of that One Bread" (i Cor. x. 17). Lastly, because the whole Body is 
said to be "edified" or " built up" through the instrumentality of that visible 
hierarchy and ministry which Christ has set over it for that express purpose. 

1 See the notes on this text in the Greek Testaments edited by BLOOMFIELD and 
ALFORD. The former says that the attempt made by some Protestant controver- 
sialists to refer the words "pillar and foundation of the truth" to -whit follows 
"lies open to insuperable objections, as stated by Poole, Benson, and Scott." 
ALFORD says : " If a sentence like this occurred in the Epistle, I should feel it 
a weightier argument against its genuineness than any which its opponents have 
yet adduced." 

To the interpretation (devised by other Protestant controversialists) which refers 
the words to Timothy, Dean ALFORU says : " To the sentence thus arranged and 
understood there are weighty and, I conceive, fatal objections." BLOOMFIELD 
says: "The natural connection of the words is certainly not, as some imagine, 
to Timothy ; for that would be an utter violation of the construction, and involve 
somewhat of an incongruity. . . . There can be no doubt but that the true refer- 
ence is to 7?rts earlv eKK\-r]<rta ["which is the Church" c.], as was maintained by 
almost all the ancient expositors and many eminent Protestant commentators, as 
Grotius, Bishop Hall, Calvin, Hammond, Gothofred, Weber, Schmid, Deyling, 
Whitby, Macknight, and Bishop Van Mildert ; and of the recent expositors, Dr. 
Peile ; and of the foreign, Wiesing, Huther, and Mack, who understand it of the 
Church universal, administered tinder an external form of government, and which, 
by maintaining the revelation of God and His religion, upholds it as a foundation 
does a building, or as pillars support an edifice. . . . Any other mode of explana- 
tion is, both pliilologically and otherwise, quite untenable" (note in loc.}. 






( II ) 

YE shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven/' &c. (Matt, xviii. 17, 
1 8). 

"He that despiseth, despiseth NOT MAN, BUT GOD" (i Thess. iv. 8. 
Comp. ch. ii. 13). 

"WE are of God : HE THAT KNOWETH GOD, HEARETH us ; he that 
is not of God, heareth us not. HEREBY KNOW WE THE SPIRIT OF 

TRUTH, AND THE SPIRIT OF ERROR" (l John iv. 6). 

(See also Acts ii. 42, 47, xv. 6, 28, xvi. 4, xx. 28, 30; Rom. xvi. 17 ; 
i Cor. i. 10, xi. 16 ; Heb. xiii. 7, 9, 17 ; Galat. i. 9 ; i Tim. i. 3, 20 ; 2 
Tim. ii. 17, 18 ; Titus i. 10, n, iii. 10, ii, &c.) 

With these declarations of our Lord and His Apostles 
should be compared the following and similar prophecies of 
the Old Testament : 

" In thee shall ALL THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH BE BLESSED. . . . 
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth ; and thou shalt spread 
abroad to the West, and to the East, and to the North, and to the South ; 

and IN THEE AND IN THY SEED SHALL ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE 
EARTH BE BLESSED" (Gen. xii. 3, xxii. 1 8, xxviii. 14. Comp. Rom. iv. 
11-17, ix. 8, 24; Galat. iii. 7-9, 26-29; Ephes. iii. 6; Matt. viii. ii ; 
Luke xiii. 29. 

" The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between 
his feet, until SHILOH come, and UNTO HIM SHALL THE GATHERING OF 
THE PEOPLE BE" (Gen. xlix. 10. Comp. John xi. 52, xii. 32). 

" Yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion. . . . Ask of Me, 
and I shall give thee THE HEATHEN FOR THY INHERITANCE, AND THE 

UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE EARTH FOR THY POSSESSION. Thou shalt 
break them with a rod of iron ; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a 
potter's vessel " (Psalm ii. 6-9). This prophecy is applied to the MESSIAS 
in Acts iv. 25, xiii. 32, 33 ; Heb. i. 5, v. 5 ; Rev. ii. 27, xii. 5, xix. 15. 

"He shall have DOMINION ALSO FROM SEA TO SEA, AND FROM THE 
RIVER UNTO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. . . . ALL KINGS SHALL FALL 
DOWN BEFORE HIM ; ALL NATIONS SHALL SERVE HIM " (Psalm Ixxii. 
8, 9. Comp. Zech. ix. 9, 10 ; Matt. xxi. 41 seq.). See also Psalm ex. 
(comp. Matt. xxii. 43-45 ; Acts ii. 34-36 ; i Cor. xv. 25 ; Heb. v. 6). 

" And the STONE that smote the image BECAME A GREAT MOUNTAIN, 
AND FILLED THE WHOLE EARTH. . . . And in the days of these kings 
[of the Roman Empire] shall the God of heaven set up A KINGDOM 

WHICH SHALL NEVER BE DESTROYED : AND ... IT SHALL STAND FOR 

EVER" (Dan. ii. 35, 44 ; Luke i. 33 ; Heb. xii. 28). 

"And it shall come to pass in the last days, 1 that THE MOUNTAIN OF 
THE LORD'S HOUSE SHALL BE ESTABLISHED IN THE TOP OF THE MOUN- 

1 " The last days" i.e., in the present Christian Dispensation. See Acts ii. 
1 6, 17 ; Heb. i. 2 ; I Cor. x. II ; I Pet. i. 20. Comp. Ephes. i. 10 ; Galat. iv. 4 
(" the fulness of times"). 



TAINS, AND SHALL BE EXALTED ABOVE THE HILLS, AND ALL NATIONS 

SHALL FLOW UNTO IT. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, 
and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the House of the God of 
Jacob : and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths : 
for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from 
Jerusalem" 1 (Isai. ii. 2, 3; Micah iv. I, 2). The early Fathers were 
unanimous in interpreting these texts of the CHURCH of CHRIST, as 
also are the most learned Protestant commentators, such as Stanhope, 
Mant, Michaelis, Lowth, Clarke, Scott, Patrick, Henderson, &c. 

" The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. . . . For 
unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall 
be upon his shoulder : ... OF THE INCREASE OF HIS GOVERNMENT 

AND PEACE THERE SHALL BE NO END," &C. (Isai. IX. 2, 6, 7. Comp. 

Matt. iv. 14-17 ; Luke i. 32, 33, 79, ii. 32). 

"AND THINE EYES SHALL SEE THY TEACHERS: AND THINE EARS 
SHALL HEAR A VOICE BEHIND THEE SAYING, THIS IS THE WAY, WALK 
YE IN IT, WHEN YE TURN TO THE RIGHT HAND, AND WHEN YE TURN TO 

THE LEFT" (Isai. xxx. 21). See also Isai. xxxv. 4-8, xl. 3-11 (comp. 
Matt. iii. 3 ; Liike i. 76, iii. 3-6) ; Isai. xlii. i seq. (comp. Matt. xii. 
17-21). 

"And He said, It is a light thing that thou [the MESSIAS] shouldest be 
My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved 
of Israel ; I will also give thee for A LIGHT TO THE GENTILES, THAT 

THOU MAYEST BE MY SALVATION UNTO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. . . . 

Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship. . . . The children 
which thou [ZlON THE CHURCH] shall have shall say, The place is too 
strait for me : give place to me that I may dwell. . . . Thus saith the 
Lord God, Behold I will lift up mine hand to the GENTILES, and set up 
my standard to the people : and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, 
and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. AND KINGS 

SHALL BE THY NURSING FATHERS, AND THEIR QUEENS THY NURSING 
MOTHERS : THEY SHALL BOW DOWN TO THEE WITH THEIR FACE TOWARD 
THE EARTH, AND LICK UP THE DUST OF THY FEET" (Isai. xlix. 6, 7, 2O- 

23. Comp. Acts xiii. 47 ; Luke ii. 32 ; Rom. xi. 12, 15, 25, xv. 9, 12, 21). 

See also Isai. Iii. i, 7, 10, 13-15. Comp. Rom. x. 15, xv. 21 ; Luke iii. 6). 

" Sing, O barren, 2 thou that didst not bear .... Enlarge the place of 

''*"* " Out of Zion " &c. Comp. Luke xxiv. 47. "Zion" and "Jerusalem" are, 
however, the titles of the Christian Church. See Galat. iv. 26 ; Heb. xii. 22. To 
the objection that ti\e peace so vividly described in Isai. ii. 4, has not existed in the 
present dispensation, it may be replied, 1st, that the language is highly figurative ; 
zdly, that still stronger expressions are used to describe the "peace" spoken of in 
ch. xi. 6-10, as existing under the Messias (comp. Acts xiii. 23 ; Rom. xv. 12) ; 
and, as HENDERSON admits, " with regard to the application of this prophecy to 
the Messiah, a greater degree of unanimity obtains among interpreters than in 
reference to almost any other." 

2 In most of the ancient prophecies which refer to the Christian Church or 
Dispensation, the Messias is spoken of as continuing and prolonging the Old 






thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations : 
spare not ; lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes : For THOU 

SHALT BREAK FORTH ON THE RIGHT HAND AND ON THE LEF*T ; AND 
THY SEED SHALL INHERIT THE GENTILES, AND MAKE THE DESOLATE 
CITIES TO BE INHABITED. . . . AS I HAVE SWORN THAT THE WATERS OF 

NOAH SHOULD NO MORE GO OVER THE EARTH ; so HAVE I SWORN THAT 

I WOULD NOT BE WROTH WITH THEE, NOR REBUKE THEE. FOR THE 
MOUNTAINS SHALL DEPART, AND THE HILLS BE REMOVED ; BUT THY 
KINDNESS SHALL NOT DEPART FROM THEE, NEITHER SHALL THE COVE- 
NANT OF MY PEACE BE REMOVED, SAITH THE LORD THAT HATH 
MERCY ON THEE. . . . ALL THY CHILDREN SHALL BE TAUGHT OF THE 
LORD, AND GREAT SHALL BE THE PEACE OF THY CHILDREN. . . . NO 
WEAPON THAT IS FORMED AGAINST THEE SHALL PROSPER ; AND EVERY 
TONGUE THAT SHALL ARISE IN JUDGMENT AGAINST THEE, THOU SHALT 

CONDEMN" (Isai. liv. i, 2, 3, 9, 10, 17). This prophecy is expressly 
applied to the Christian Church by St. Paul in Galat. iv. 22-31. Comp. 
Rom. ix. 24-26. 

"And the Redeemer shall come to Zion. ... As for Me, this is MY 
COVENANT with them, saith the Lord : MY SPIRIT THAT is UPON THEE, 

AND MY WORDS WHICH I HAVE PUT IN THY MOUTH, SHALL NOT DEPART 
OUT OF THY MOUTH, NOR OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THY SEED, NOR OUT 
OF THE MOUTH OF THY SEED'S SEED, SAITH THE LORD, FROM HENCE- 
FORTH AND FOR EVER" (Isai. lix. 2O, 21. Comp. Jerem. xxxi. 31-34; 
cited by St. Paul in Heb. viii. 7-13). 

" The GENTILES shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of 
thy rising : . . . the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, 
the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. . . . THY GATES SHALL 

BE OPEN CONTINUALLY ; THEY SHALL NOT BE SHUT DAY NOR NIGHT ; 
THAT MEN MAY BRING UNTO THEE THE FORCES OF THE GENTILES, AND 

Economy ; the Christian Polity being described, not as something antagonistic to 
or different from that which then existed, viz., the Jewish, but rather as its 
transformation, perfection, and development. The future Church of the Gentiles 
is identified with the Jewish Church then existing; and the prophecies relating to 
the establishment and increase of the Church of the Messias are addressed to her 
in her imperfect, "barren," and undeveloped state, confined and limited as she 
then was to one small nation and people. 

Many of these prophecies were declared by our Lord or His Apostles to have 
received, or to be about to receive, their fulfilment by the establishment or 
increase of the Christian or Gentile Church (see Matt. iii. 2, 3, iv. 16, 17, 
v. 17, viii. u, xi. 3, 4, 12-14, xii - 17-21, 28, xxi. 4-15, 43 ; Luke ii. 32, 
iv. 18-21, vii. 27, 28, xi. 20, xvi. 16, xvii. 21 ; Acts ii. 16-36, xiii. 23, 32, 
33, 47, xv. 14-17 ; Rom. iv. 16, ix. 8, 24, 25, x. 20, xi. 12, 15, 25, xv. 9, 12, 
21, xvi. 26; Galat. iii. 7, 9, 14, 16, 26-29, i v - 26-31 ; Ephes. ii. 12, iii. 6; 
Heb. viii. 6-12, x. 16, xii. 22, 28, &c.) ; and, from the earliest ages, all the 
great Christian Apologists unhesitatingly appealed to their actual fulfilment in the 
present Dispensation, as being one of the most luminous evidences of the Divine 
mission of Christ and of the Church which He established. 



( 14 ) 

THAT THEIR KINGS MAY BE BROUGHT. FOR THE NATION AND KING- 
DOM THAT WILL NOT SERVE THEE SHALL PERISH. . . . The sons also of 

them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee ; and all they that 
despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet ; and 
they shall call thee, THE CITY OF THE LORD, THE ZION OF THE HOLY 
ONE OF ISRAEL" (Isai. lx. 3, 5, n, 14. Comp. vers. i, 2, with Matt. 
iv. 16, 17 ; ver. 14 with Heb. xii. 22, Matt. v. 14 ; and ver. 5 seq. with 
Rom. xi. 12, 15, 25, &c). See also Isai. Ixi. (Comp. Litke iv. 17-21) ; 
Isai. Ixii. 1-7, n, 12, Ixv. i seq. (Comp. Rom. x. 20, ix. 24, 30.) 

" FROM THE RISING OF THE SUN, EVEN TO THE GOING DOWN OF THE 
SAME, MY NAME SHALL BE GREAT AMONG THE GENTILES, and IN EVERY 

PLACE incense shall be offered to My name, and a pure offering ; for My 
name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts " (Mai. 
i. ii. Comp. Rom. xv. 16). 

II. From the passages of Scripture above cited it is also 
evident that, in order to secure and effect the unfailing pre- 
servation and world-wide propagation of His true Faith and 
Religion, that CHURCH or TEACHING BODY, which the 
Redeemer appointed to be the Organ and Instrument of its 
preservation and extension, must, among the characteristics 
and prerogatives which are essential to it, possess 

(i.) PERPETUAL VISIBILITY; 

(2.) APOSTOLICITY the ORDERS AND MISSION OF ITS 
PASTORS, as well as its DOCTRINE and WHOLE POLITY, 
being transmitted through continuous and legitimate SUC- 
CESSION FROM THE APOSTLES ; 

(3.) CATHOLICITY or UNIVERSALITY as to TIME (or 
DURATION), PLACE (or EXTENT), and DOCTRINE ; 

(4.) UNITY in its FAITH, SACRAMENTS, PUBLIC WOR- 
SHIP, and GOVERNMENT ; 

(5.) INFALLIBILITY or INERRANCY IN ITS TEACHING; 
which five marks and prerogatives of the true Church may, 
for the purpose of this argument, be mainly reduced to two 
only, viz., CATHOLICITY and UNITY; it being sufficient to 
observe that the Church must have been endowed, in the first 
place, with a THREEFOLD CATHOLICITY 

(i.) of TIME or DURATION, 
(2.) of PLACE or EXTENT, 
(3.) of DOCTRINE, 



( 15 ) 

in order to fulfil the great Commission given to her by her 
Divine Founder, viz., to TEACH 

(l.) "ALWAYS, TO THE END OF THE WORLD," or " UNTIL 
WE ALL COME -INTO THE UNITY OF THE FAITH " (Catholicity 

of TIME) ; 

(2.) To " ALL NATIONS," and " EVERY CREATURE " (Catho- 
licity of PLACE, or EXTENT) ; l 

(3.) "ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER" her Lord had "COM- 
MANDED," " ALL TRUTH " (Catholicity of DOCTRINE) ; 
and, in the second place, that this Church must be so essen- 
tially and organically " ONE " (" ONE FOLD," " ONE BODY," 
ONE " KINGDOM," " CITY," or " HOUSE," that CANNOT BE 
"DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF 5 '); 2 and, throughout her whole 
domain, and in every age, must so visibly manifest her 
Divinely-secured Unity 

(i.) of FAITH, or DOCTRINAL TEACHING and BELIEF, 

(2.) of COMMUNION, 

(3.) of REGIMEN or GOVERNMENT, 

1 When St. Paul, in his Epistle to the ROMANS, speaks of the Church as 
receiving "THE FULNESS OF THE GENTILES," and causing the reconciliation of 
"THE WORLD" by her preaching of the Gospel (see Rom. i. 5, 8, x. 14-17, 
xi. 12, 15, 25, xv. 12, 1 8, xvi. 26, &c.), could any doubt that the fulfilment of 
such prophecies as Isai. liv., lx., Mai. i. n, was shortly to be effected through 
her instrumentality ? Or, when again writing to the same Church of Rome, he 
said that God "WOULD BRUISE SATAN UNDER THEIR FEET SHORTLY" (Rbm. 
xvi. 20) evidently referring to the ancient prophecy that " the Seed of the woman 
should bruise the Serpent's head" (Gen. iii. 15), and to our Lord's declaration that 
He was about to "cast out the Prince of this world, and to draw all men unto 
Himself' could he have meant anything else than that that great City, which 
was then the head and centre of Pagan idolatry "the mother of harlots and 
abominations of the earth " (Rev. xvii. 5) should shortly become the head and 
centre of the true religion, the mother of all Churches, and mainspring of the 
propagation of Christianity through the entire world ? 

2 The very titles of "KINGDOM," " CITY," and " HOUSE," so often given to 
the Church in Scripture (see the texts above quoted ; especially Isai. ii. 2, lx. 14, 
Ixii. 12; Dan. ii. 44; Hcb. xii. 28; Matt. v. 14; Ephes. ii. 21; Coloss. i. 13; 
I Tim. iii. 15 ; 2 Tim. ii. 20 ; Hcb. iii. 6, x. 21, xii. 22 ; i Pet. ii. 5, iv. 17, &c.), 
when taken in connection with the promises of her perpetuity, necessarily imply 
her absolute and organic UNITY : for " Every Kingdom, divided against itself, is 
brought to desolation ; and every city or house, divided against itself, will not stand" 
(Matt. xii. 25). On ONE ROCK was this Church built ; to ONE were the " Keys " 
the symbol of supreme power, the mastership over the Lord's House, the 
guardianship of the Lord's City committed ; to ONE was the Pastorship of the 
whole Flock delegated (John xxi. 15-17); in order that the UNITY of the same 
might be both manifested and secured. 



as not only to present to the unbelieving " WORLD " (John 
xvii. 21, 23; Rom. i. 8, xi. 15; Coloss. i. 6) a plain token 
and evidence of the Divine Mission of her Founder, but also 
to guarantee to her own faithful children, and to all seekers 
after -the Truth, entire exemption from and security against 
the vain and ever-varying speculations of all mere human 
teachers and heretical innovators. 

III. Hence it necessarily follows : that no Church or 
body of professing Christians can claim or pretend to be 
THE TRUE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST, which cannot prove 
itself 

(i.) To have had a VISIBLE EXISTENCE IN ALL AGES FROM 

THE TIME OF CHRIST ; 

(2.) To have been CONTINUALLY ENGAGED IN FULFILLING, 
through a Ministry duly ordained and " sent" the Commission 
given to it by Christ, by "DISCIPLING AND BAPTIZING," 
and thus progressively extending her dominion over "ALL 
NATIONS " of the world ; 

(3.) Teaching them the WHOLE 1 Revelation of Jesus Christ, 

1 But not, of course, always and everywhere with the same explicitness and 
fulness (see I Cor. iii. i, 2; Heb. v. 11-14). It is well known that, during 
several centuries, the Canon of Scripture itself remained undetermined ; and Pro- 
testants themselves will hardly deny that the Nicene Creed contained a develop- 
ment of the doctrine contained in that of the Apostles, or that the Athanasian 
Creed contained a still further development or explication of the Christian Faith 
regarding the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. 

" There has ever been," says Dr. W. TODD, "and there is still, a gradual and 
very striking growth of Christian doctrine in the Church. Truths which were once 
held in their naked simplicity have unfolded, by a necessary development, more and 
more of the profound mysteries contained within each of them. As time goes on, 
the Christian intellect, leaning upon the support of the Church, is enabled to see 
more clearly the bearing of one doctrine upon another, its relation to truths that 
flow out of it, its place in the analogy of the faith, its full scope and significance. 
Dogmas, in some sense new, spring out of more general truths, new because 
hitherto only faintly perceived, though in germ and in substance they have always 
been in the revelation of Christ. All theologians admit a progression of doctrine 
in the Church ; and unless Christianity be nothing more than a bare and dry code 
of laws, there must be some such progression. Every truth that comes from God 
must contain within itself unsearchable treasures of wisdom: It is like a seed 
sown in the earth, which grows and spreads into a large tree. But this growth is 
only in the Church. Outside, truth is questioned, doubted, torn in pieces, tossed 
about by every vain blast. Within, there is a consistent and true growth. And 
everything favours this growth the meditations of the devout, the inquiries of the 
learned, nay, the very contradictions of the heretics. For the greater part of the 



( '7 ) 

and instructing them in "ALL" His Doctrines, Precepts, and 
Ordinances ; 

(4.) Always and everywhere so manifesting herself as 
" ONE," in her Faith, Public Worship, Sacraments, and 
Government, as to present to the whole world a proof of her 
Divine Origin, and of her being in possession of an unerring 
Teaching Authority, such as must at all times bring those 
who submit to it to " meet in the unity of the faith!' and pre- 
serve them from being carried about by the various blasts 
of false doctrine, to which those outside the pale of the true 
Church are continually exposed. 

IV. Now, no PROTESTANT Church i.e., no Church out 
of communion with, or teaching doctrines opposed to, the 
Roman Catholic Church was, or ever pretended to have 
been, thus VISIBLE, APOSTOLIC, CATHOLIC, and ONE, 
either before or subsequently to the time of the so-called 
" Reformation." 

It was not by any such Church, 1 it was not by any of 

decrees of Councils and decisions of the Holy See have originated in the neces- 
sity of guarding the faithful against the false opinions put forth by those who are 
separated from the Church. In this way, even the attempt to sow discord and to 
bring in false doctrine has only tended to the completion and perfection of 
Catholic doctrine" (Lect. on the Inspiration and Interpretation of Holy Scripture, 
1863, p. 66). See also The Written Word, by the Rev. W. HUMPHREY, 1877, 
pp. 199-206. Cardinal NEWMAN'S remark, that ' the growth or development 
in the Church's teaching proceeds on fixed laws, under the safeguard of her infalli- 
bility, vvhich secures her from whatever is abnormal or unhealthy," is alone enough 
to show the futility of the ordinary Protestant objections in regard to it. 

The principle of development of Christian doctrine is admitted by the Anglican 
Bishop BUTLER, who remarks that "it is not at all incredible that a book [the 
Bible], which has been so long in the possession of mankind, should contain many 
truths as yet undiscovered," and that " possibly it might be intended that events 
as they come to pass should open and ascertain the meaning of several parts of 
Scripture " (Analogy, pt. ii. ch. iii. sect. 9). 

1 Some Protestants are still fond of referring to the miserable hole-and-corner 
sects of the Middle Ages, the ALBIGENSES, WALDENSES, CATHARISTS, c., 
as having promulgated in their day some doctrines akin to those of modern 
sectaries ; but the true history of the origin, doctrines, and principles of those 
"precursors of the Reformation" has been thoroughly exposed during the last 
half-century by candid Protestant writers, such as HALLAM (Middle Ages, ch. 
ix.), MAITLAND (Facts and Documents illustrative of the History, Doctrines, and 
Rites of the Ancient Albigenses and Waldcnses, 1832 ; and Letter to Dr. Mill, con- 
taining Strictures on Mr. Fabers Work, &>c., 1839^ andToDD (Discourses on the 

B 






( '8 ) 

the sects of Protestantism, either separately or collectively, 
it was not by any of their " Bible " or " Missionary " societies 
that the Commission given by Christ to "DISCIPLE AND 
BAPTIZE ALL NATIONS," was in every or in any former age 

Prophecies relating to Antichrist, Donnellan Lectures in Trin. Coll., Dublin, 
1840, notes, pp. 399-453. See also NEANDER'S Church Hist., Bonn's edit., 
vol. viii. pp. 283 seq. t 295-331, 350 seq. ; BLUNT'S Diet, of Sects, &c. ; and a 
valuable work entitled Origines Protestanticfs, or Suggestions for an Historical 
Inquiry into the Origin of the Protestant Religion, Longhurst, Lond., 1877) ; and 
what Protestants are really called upon to do is to show, if they can, some other 
Church than the Catholic which has fulfilled Christ's commission by "-teaching 
and baptizing all nations" some other Church which has been in all ages "the 
Light of the world," "the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth" "the City set 
on a hill which could not be hid" According to all Protestant accounts, the 
growth or development of the Christian Church resembled, at the best, that of a 
miserable tapeworm ; whereas, according to the teaching of the Gospels, it was 
to be like that of a TREE, a tree " shooting otit great branches " {Mark iv. 32), 
and giving shelter and protection to " all nations " of the world. 

Of the schismatical GREEK Church little need here be said, ist, because in 
all the Articles of Faith controverted by Protestants (with the exception of that of 
the Pope's Supremacy distinctly acknowledged by the Greek Church itself in 
the great Councils of EPHESUS and CHALCEDON ; see Father Gallwey's Lectures on 
Ritualism, Nos. 7 and 8), that Church has always been at one with the Catholic 
Church ; and, zdly, because the Eastern Church, since its separation from the rest 
of Christendom, has never been in any sense a Missionary Church ; and could 
make no pretensions to the possession of those essential marks of the true Church 
above referred to, viz., Catholicity, Unity, &c. (see DE MAISTRE on The Pope, 
Eng. trans., pp. 308-340). 

Dr. MILMAN (late Dean of St. Paul's) says : " At the extinction of Paganism, 
Greek, or, as it may now be called, in opposition to the West, Eastern Chris- 
tianity, had almost ceased to be aggressive or creative. Except the contested 
conversion of the Bulgarians, later of the Russians, and a few wild tribes, it 
achieved no conquests. . . . The Greek hierarchy had now [a few centuries 
later] lost their unity of action, . . . the Bishop of Constantinople was the passive 
victim, the humble slave, or the factious adversary of the Byzantine Emperor. . . . 
The lower clergy sank downward into the common ignorance, and yielded to that 
worst barbarism a worn-out civilisation " (Hist, of Latin Christianity, Introduce., 
vol. i. ed. 1867) " The effete and hopeless East" (Ib. vol. ii. p. 413). 

NEANDER, the German (Protestant) Church historian, says that "in the Greek 
Church ... all true intellectual progress had long since been suppressed by a 
political and spiritual despotism " (Hist, of the Church, Bohn's edit., vol. v. 
p. 233) ; and that " the healthful and free evolution of the Church and of theo- 
logy among the Greeks was hindered by two causes the despotism of the civil 
government, before which everything crouched the Bishops themselves not 
seldom consenting to act as its humble instruments ; and the extinction of the 
sense of truth, the spirit of insincerity, already a predominant trait which had 
stamped itself on the entire life of the people" (Ib. vol. vi. p. 261). And again : 
" In comparison with the fulness of life, manifesting itself under such a variety 



( '9 ) 

fulfilled (in fact, it is notorious that NO SINGLE NATION OF 
THE EARTH WAS EVER YET CONVERTED FROM HEATHENISM 

i;v PROTESTANT AGENCY OR TO THE PROFESSION OF PRO- 
TESTANT CHRISTIANITY); nor can it be pretended that, 
before the sixteenth century, there existed throughout the 
world any body of PROTESTANT "Pastors and Teachers" 
which had been provided by God "for the perfecting of the 
Saints, for the work of the Ministry, for the edifying of the 
Body of Christ;" and for bringing all men to "meet in the 
nnity of the faith" and so preserving them therein, that they 
were no longer liable to be " tossed to and fro, and carried 
about by the blasts of false and heretical doctrine" (EpJics. iv. 
11-15). I n fact, no Protestant can for a moment admit that 
" the nations " were, during many centuries preceding the 
pretended Reformation, " taught to observe all things what- 
soever Christ had commanded" or that that Church, which 
did, in point of fact, "teach" them, was "THE PILLAR AND 
FOUNDATION OF THE TRUTH," and "GUIDED INTO ALL 

TRUTH BY THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH," when she did SO. 1 

of forms, and moving in such various directions, in the Church of the West, the 
Greek Church presents a melancholy spectacle of stiff and torpid uniformity. 
While the ecclesiastical monarchy of the West could lead onward the mental 
development of the nations to the age of majority, could permit and promote 
freedom and variety within certain limits the brute force of Byzantine despotism, 
on the other hand, stifled and checked every free movement " (Ib. vol. viii. 
p. 244). 

MARSDEN says : "Buried beneath the ruins of a fallen empire, the Eastern 
Church drags on a lingering existence. . . . In tracing the expiring form of this 
decayed fabric , we search in vain for those striking features which mark her ambitions 
rival of the West" (Diet, of Christian Churches and Sects, London, 1855). 

HALLAM declares his conviction that "the Greek Church, notwithstanding the 
leniency with which Protestant writers have treated it, was always more corrupt 
and intolerant than the Latin " (Middle Ages, ch. ix. part ii. note). Compare Dr. 
ISAAC TAYLOR'S Ancient Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 173, 192, 205, 213, 214, &c. ; 
and Professor J. H. TODD'S Discourses on the Prophecies relating to Antichrist, 
PP- 330, 342, 351. 

1 The HOMILY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, On Peril of Idolatry, part iii., 
declares that "clergy and laity, learned and unlearned, ALL AGES, SECTS, AND 

DEGREES OF MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN, OF WHOLE CHRISTENDOM, HAVE 
BEEN AT ONCE DROWNED IN DAMNABLE IDOLATRY, AND THAT BY THE SPACE 
OF EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS AND MORE." 

CHILLINGWORTH says that "ALL THE VISIBLE CHURCHES IN THE WORLD 
had degenerated from the purity of the Gospel," and that the Church was 



( 20 ) 

Even during the few centuries of the existence of Protes- 
tantism, notwithstanding the immense advantages and faci- 
lities which the invention of printing, and a remarkable com- 
bination of favourable circumstances literary, commercial, 
and political have placed in the hands of its missionaries 
(enabling them to scatter abroad, as they themselves boast, 
hundreds of millions of copies of Bibles, New Testaments, and 
other books, translated into the languages of all known coun- 
tries of the world), it is certain that the most signal failure 
has attended^ all their efforts to convert heathen nations ; l 

"CORRUPTED UNIVERSALLY" (Religion of Protestants, chap. v. sects. 13 and 
27). 

Dr. PERKINS : " We say that before the days of Luther, FOR THE SPACE OF 

MANY HUNDRED YEARS, AN UNIVERSAL APOSTASY OVERSPREAD THE WHOLE 
FACE OF THE EARTH, AND THAT OUR CHURCH WAS NOT THEN VISIBLE TO THE 
WORLD " (On the Creed, p. 400). 

Dr. ISAAC TAYLOR not only admits, but proves at length, the " UNIVERSALITY" 
of the distinctive doctrines and practices of the " Romish" and Greek Churches 
even in the fourth century. " Scarcely a writer, if there be one," he says, " of 
the NICENE Church Eastern or Western would withhold his contributions to 
the mass [of evidence producible] : and alas ! what a volume would Augustine 
alone furnish !" (Ancient Christianity, vol. ii. p. 213). 

1 This is proved very fully and elaborately in MARSHALL'S great work Chris- 
tian Missions, their Agents, their Method, and their Resiilts (2 vols., 2d edit., 
Longmans & Co.) in which hundreds of testimonies are collected from Protestant 
authors, "of all classes and creeds English and American, German and French, 
Swedish and Dutch ; historians and naturalists, civil and military officials, tourists 
and merchants, chaplains and missionaries " a host of careful and accurate 
observers, who, as Mr. M. remarks, may be regarded as " witnesses employed by 
Divine Providence, without their knowledge or concurrence, to detect and expose 
to the world a fact which the eager passions and prejudices of men would other- 
wise combine to conceal." By the acknowledgments made by them stand clearly 
revealed, on the one hand, the utter and universal failure of Protestant missions 
in all parts of the world, notwithstanding the incredibly large sums that, during 
the present century, have been annually expended upon them ; and, on the other, 
the marvellous results which, during the last three centuries and a half, as in all 
former ages, have everywhere attended the labours of the Catholic missionaries, 
and this generally under circumstances the most discouraging and disadvantageous 
from a worldly point of view. 

Reviewing this work of Marshall's, the NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, edited by 
Dr. HANNA, a well-known Presbyterian divine, said : 

" During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Romish Church girded the 
globe with her missions, planting the Cross from beyond the Wall of China to the 
Peruvian Cordilleras. Nor is it to be denied that her missionaries in those years 
were men abounding in Christian heroism and sacrifices. Of monetary means at 
her disposal, she had not so much as any one of our Protestant societies. But she 






and so far from the professors of Protestantism presenting, 
either at home amongst themselves, or to the heathen to 
whom they send missionaries abroad, a spectacle of RELI- 
GIOUS UNITY" ONE FOLD," "ONE BODY," " ONE FAITH," 

had, what, alas ! we so often fail to get, abundance of large-hearted men, ready to 
do and suffer everything for the faith." And again : " This interesting inquiry," 
as to the wonderful success of the Catholic, as contrasted with the signal failure 
of the Protestant missions, " is one the solution of which calls for deeper thought 
and greater fairness than polemical divines have yet allowed it ; for the student of 
history will not be satisfied without some theory or law adequate to account for THE 

UNDENIABLE FACT THAT HITHERTO THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY AMONGST 
THE HEATHEN HAS CHIEFLY BEEN CARRIED ON BY ROMANISM, AND ONLY IN A 
SLIGHT MANNER AS YET BY A CONSISTENT AND SCRIPTURAL PROTESTANTISM " 

(North British Review , May 1864, p. 433). 

With Archdeacon PALEY'S reflections on the " little progress " and " inconsider- 
able effect " of PROTESTANT missions, up to the time when he wrote his Evidences 
of Christianity (see part ii. ch. ix. sect. 3), it is instructive to contrast the account 
given by another Protestant, the German historian RANKE, of the wonderful 
success of the CATHOLIC missions about the end of the sixteenth and beginning 
of the seventeenth centuries : 

"In the beginning of the seventeenth century," he says, "we find the proud 
fabric of the Catholic Church completely erected in SOUTH AMERICA. It pos- 
sessed five archbishoprics, twenty-seven bishoprics, four hundred monasteries, 
with parish churches and ' doctrinas ' innumerable. Magnificent cathedrals had 
been reared, the most gorgeous of all, perhaps, being that of Los Angeles. The 
Jesuits taught grammar and the liberal arts ; they had also a theological seminary 
attached to their college of San Ildefonso in Mexico. In the universities of Mexico 
and Lima all the branches of theology were studied. . . . Christianity was, mean- 
while, in course of gradual and regular diffusion throughout South America, the 
mendicant Orders being more particularly active. The conquests had become 
changed into a seat of missions, and the missions were rapidly proclaiming civili- 
sation." . . . 

" A similar process was at the same time in action through EAST INDIA, so far as 
the rule of the Portuguese extended. Catholicism obtained a central position of 
great value in Goa. Thousands were converted every year ; even as early as 1565, 
300,000 of these newly-made Christians were computed to be in and around Goa, 
in the mountains of Cochin, and at Cape Com^.rin. . . . In the year 1609, Father 
Nobili had already converted seventy Brahmins" . . . 

" The labours undertaken at the same time in the court of the EMPEROR AKBAR 
were no less remarkable. ... In the year 1599, Christmas was celebrated at 
Lahore with the utmost solemnity. . . . The Christians made great progress. 
After the death of Akbar, three princes of the blood-royal were solemnly 
baptized. . . . Christianity seemed gradually to acquire a position of fixed char- 
acter, although with certain vicissitudes. . . . In 1621 a college was founded in 
Agra and a station was established at Patna. In 1624 there were hopes that 
the Emperor Jehanguhe would himself become a convert." . . . 

" The Jesuits had made their way in CHINA at the same period. . . In 1611 
the first church in Nankin was consecrated, and in 1616 Christian churches are 



( 22 ) 

&c. it is but too notorious that their profound religious 
discords and dissensions all arising from that first and funda- 
mental principle of their religion, " THE LIBERTY OF PRIVATE 
JUDGMENT," and resulting in the formation of innumerable 
Sects, 1 hopelessly divided against one another in Faith and 
Communion have been, almost from the first year of its 
existence, and in every country where Protestantism has 

described as existing in five different provinces of the empire. . . . There passed 
no year that they did not convert thousands, while those who opposed them 
gradually became extinct." . . . 

" In the year 1577, 300,000 Christians were computed to have received baptism 
in JAPAN. Father Velignano, who died in 1606, . . . was himself the founder 
of three hundred churches, and thirty houses for Jesuits in Japan. . . . After the 
year 1612, they were subjected to fearful persecutions. But they maintained their 
ground with great steadiness. Their proselytes invoked the death of the martyr, 
and they had established a fraternity of martyrs, the members of which mutually 
encouraged each other to the endurance of every possible infliction : they dis- 
tinguished those years as the &ra Martyr-urn. But despite the increasing violence 
of the persecutions, their historians affirm that even at that dangerous period new 
converts were continually added to their numbers. They give the exact amount 
of 239,339 as that of the converts to Christianity among the Japanese from 1603 
to 1622." . . . 

" In all these countries ... the Jesuits made progress beyond all that they could 
have hoped for, and succeeded in conquering, at least partially, the resistance of 
the national forms of religion that were paramount in the East " (RANKE's Hist, 
of the Popes, Bonn's edit., vol. ii. pp. 228-235). 

Lord MACAULAY thus contrasts the Catholic and Protestant Churches during 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : 

" As the Catholics in zeal and union had a great advantage over the Protestants, 
so had they also an infinitely s^<per^or organisation. In truth, PROTESTANTISM FOR 
AGGRESSIVE PURPOSES HAD NO ORGANISATION AT ALL. The Reformed Churches 
were mere national Churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. 
It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas, and was 
utterly without any machinery for foreign operations. The Church of Scotland in 
like manner existed for Scotland alone. THE OPERATIONS OF THE CATHOLIC 
CHURCH, ON THE OTHER HAND, TOOK IN THE WHOLE WORLD" (Essays, vol. 
iii. p. 236). 

During the present century, as already observed, Protestants have expended 
annually enormous sums on " Missions to the Heathen ; " but, as regards resiills, 
the CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER declared in 1859, that " iv<> should not allow a 
few isolated instances of success here and there to blind tis to what we must call, to 
' speak plainly, the faihire of missionary efforts in modern times" (Christ. Remembr., 
v l- 37? P- 69) ; and similar admissions are made by later Protestant writers. (See 
MARSHALL'S Christ. Miss, passim). 

1 STAPHYLUS and Cardinal Hosius reckoned 270 Sects of Protestants before 
the end of the sixteenth century. HALLAM reckons " the growing dissensions and 
"virulence of the Protestants " among the causes which powerfully tended to make 



shown itself, an opprobrium and disgrace to the very name 
of Christianity. 1 

V. Hence it inevitably follows, that no Protestant Sect or 
conglomeration of Sects can constitute or represent that 
One, True, and Original Church, founded by Christ for the 
propagation and extension of His One true Faith and Religion 
throughout the whole world, and for the preservation of that 
same Faith and Religion throughout all ages ; and to which, 
in the performance and execution of the commission assigned 
to it, He had guaranteed the most perfect success, and exemp- 
tion from all liability to failure or error, by the promise of 
His own perpetual and efficacious assistance, and the infal- 
lible guidance of the Spirit of Truth : 

" GO, TEACH ALL NATIONS ; AND LO ! I AM WITH YOU 
ALWAYS, EVEN TO THE END OF THE WORLD." ' 2 

the learned GROTIUS seek refuge in the Catholic Communion (Hist, of Litera- 
ture, vol. ii. p. 409, ed. 1860). " Lutherans and Calvinists," says RANKE, "stood 
opposed to each other with a feeling of mutual hatred ; . . . Episcopalians and 
Puritans, Arminians and Gomarists, attacked each other with the fiercest hate " 
(Hist, of the Popes, B. vii. ch. ii. sect. i). 

1 See BALMEZ'S European Civilisation Catholicism and Protestantism Com- 
pared; especially chap. xlv. : " The tiniversal progress of Christianity impeded 
by Protestantism /" also MARSHALL'S Christian Missions, passim. 

2 "ALWAYS, TO THE END OF THE WORLD," e'ws TTJS ffwreXetas TOV aluvos. 
This phrase occurs elsewhere in the Gospels (Matt. xiii. 39, 40, 49, xxiv. 3, &c.), and, 
as BLOOMFIELD says, is "always employed in this sense, of THE WORLD'S END." 

With regard to the pronoun "you " ("lo ! I am with you," &c.), it is hardly 
necessary to observe, that the use of it no more limits either the Commission or 
the Promise to the Apostles personally, than did the use of the pronoun "we" in 
I Cor. xv. 51, I Thess. iv. 17, imply that St. Paul, and those to whom he was 
writing, would themselves be living on the earth until the Day of Judgment. 
Christ addressed the Apostles as a BODY CORPORATE ; and, according to the com- 
mon saying, "a Body Corporate never dies." The " LIGHT OF THE WORLD" 
was not to be diminished through the death or defection of particular members of 
the Teaching Body ; and it should be observed, that the promise given to this 
latter, of Christ's perpetual presence and assistance in the execution of the Com- 
mission assigned to it, was given to it not for its own sake or benefit, but for 
the good of those ("all nations ") whom it was to " disciple," and as a perpetual 
provision and security for their being unerringly instructed in "all things what- 
soever He had commanded" 

It is evident, therefore, that in sending "the eleven Apostles" to execute His 
commission, Christ sent the whole Body of Pastors, who should derive their mission 
from Himself, through the Apostles and their legitimate Successors, to the end of 
time. His words, therefore, may be thus paraphrased : In commanding you (My 
Apostles), I command the whole Body of Pastors succeeding you, to "teach all 



( 24 ) 

"THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH SHALL ABIDE WITH YOU FOR 
EVER : HE SHALL GUIDE YOU INTO ALL TRUTH." 

" Not for these only do I pray, but for them also who shall 
believe on Me through their word : THAT THEY ALL MAY 
BE ONE, IN ORDER THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE THAT 
THOU HAST SENT ME." 

VI. On the other hand, it follows no less certainly, that 
that Church which alone has had a Visible Existence in all 

nations" In commanding you, I command them, to "baptize all nations. ," In 
promising to be with you, I promise to be with them in the execution of My com- 
mission, and in the work of the ministry. " And beJiold I am with you always, 
even to the end of the world." 

CHRIST intended His CHURCH to be propagated in ALL nations, and to exist in 
ALL ages ; and for the securing of this end, " He ordained that there should be a 
race and succession of Apostolic Ministers, teaching His Doctrines, administering 
His Sacraments, and enforcing the observance of His Precepts, in all nations and 
ages ; for it was by the introduction of the DOCTRINES of Christ, of the SACRA- 
MENTS of Christ, and of the PRECEPTS and INSTITUTIONS of Christ, into all 
nations, that THE CHURCH of Christ was to be established in all nations, by the 
ministry of those to whom He gave this commission " (Poynter}. 

The promise, " I am with you always" is equivalent to that in John xiv. 16, 
and xvi. 12 : " The Spirit of Truth shall abide with you for ever; He shall guide 
you into all truth ;" and its force becomes more apparent by a comparison with 
other passages in Scripture, where, after giving a COMMISSION of peculiar diffi- 
culty to man, God adds the promise, " / will be with you" as a guarantee and 
security of the possibility and certainty of its fulfilment. See especially Gen. xxxi. 
3, xlvi. 3, 4 ; Exod. iii. n, 12 ; Jer. i. 17, 19. See also Gen. xxvi. 3, 24; Deiit. 
xxxi. 23 ; Josh. i. 5, 9, iii. 7 ; Judges vi. 15, 16 ; 2 Kings vii. 9 ; Isai. xli. 10, xliii. 
2 > 5 > J er ' xv - 2O ) xlii- 1 1 ; Acts xviii. 9, 10 ; &c. (Compare Gen. xxi. 22, xxviii. 
20, xxxix. 2, 3, 21, 23; Deut. ii. 7, xxxi. 8 ; Josh. xiv. 12 ; I Kings iii. 19, x. 7 ; 
2 Kings v. 10 ; i Chron. xxviii. 20 ; Ps. xxiii. 4, 5 ; Jer. xx. II ; Luke'\. 28, 66 ; 
John iii. 2, viii. 29; Acts x. 38, xi. 21 ; c.) From these passages it appears that 
when a promise or assurance is given that God " would be with " any person, it is 
always signified that God so protected and aided that person by His special provi- 
dence, that whatsoever he undertook should infallibly succeed ; but this conclusion is 
of course most obvious when as in the first passages referred to the promise is 
given with special reference to the difficulty of some undertaking, or in connection 
with a Commission (such as that in Matt, xxviii.) incapable of accomplishment by 
any merely human means. 

When, therefore, our Lord promised to "be with" the Teaching Body, in the 
execution of the Commission assigned to it, "always to the end of the world" that 
promise implied, and was a guarantee, 1st, that the Teaching Body should exist 
indefectibly to the end of the world ; and zdly, that throughout the whole course of 
its existence it should be divinely guarded and assisted in fulfilling the Commission 
given to it, viz., in instructing the nations in "all things whatsoever Christ has 
commanded j " in other words, that it should be their INFALLIBLE GUIDE AND 
TEACHER. 



ages from the time of Christ, which can " unroll the cata- 
logue of her Bishops" (TERTULLIAN, De Prescript. Hczret., 
c. 32), and prove their continuous succession from the Apostles 
of Christ; which has fulfilled, or been always engaged in 
fulfilling, the Commission which He gave to her, by " dis- 
cipling" and receiving into her communion by Baptism "all 
the nations" of the earth; that Church whose exhibition 
of perfect and supernatural Unity did lead an unbelieving 
" world " to recognise the Divine Mission of her Founder ; 
and which alone possesses and alone claims to possess that 
Divinely-established TEACHING AUTHORITY, by means of 
which that Unity was and is secured ; it follows, I say, that 
that Church must be the alone True and Original One, which 
He Himself founded, and to which the Promises were made. 

VII. But, as is most clearly demonstrable, it is of THE 
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH/ and of her ALONE, that all this 
can be truly said. 

SHE ALONE has " discipled and baptized " all those nations 
of the world which have ever yet received the Christian 
Faith, including all those which now profess Protestantism, 
and which in the sixteenth century apostatised from that 
faith to which they had originally been converted from their 
heathenism, 2 and that Church by which, and into which, they 

1 By the term Roman Catholic Church is meant the Catholic Church in com- 
munion with the See of Rome. St. Peter's first See was that of Antioch, where 
" the disciples were first called Christians " (Acts xi. 26) ; but the Primatial Chair 
was subsequently transferred by him to ther Imperial City, which thus, as St. LEO 
the Great remarks, became the Head of the world in a spiritual sense "ruling 
more widely by divine religion than by earthly empire " (Serin. Si). From an 
early date the Faith of the Roman Church was "renowned in all the world" 
(Rom. i. 8, xvi. 19, 20) ; and, as the French sceptic M. RKXAN remarks, it was 
through the Papacy that the Christian Church really became Catholic : " The 
Pope of Rome" he says, "has made Christianity the religion of the world" 
(Hibbert Lectures, 1880, Eng. trans., p. 122). 

2 Dean MILMAN says : "All these conquests of Christianity were, in a certain 
sense, the conquests of the Roman See. . . . Reverence for Rome penetrated ivith 
the Gospel to the remotest parts. Germany was converted to Latin Christianity. 
Rome was the source, the centre, the regulating authority recognised by the 
English apostles of the Teutons. The clergy -were constantly visiting Rome as the 
religious capital of the world, . . . and bishops from the remotest parts of the 
Empire, and of regions never penetrated by the Roman arms, looked to Rome as the 
parent of their faith if not to an infallible, at least to the highest authority in 



( 26 ) 

had been baptized. SHE ALONE has been in all ages " the 
Light of the world" " a City set on a hill, that could not be 
hid;" SHE ALONE "the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth," 
rendering it conspicuous, and the knowledge of it attainable 
to all mankind ; SHE ALONE that Heavenly Kingdom, the 

Christendom " (B. iv. ch. vi. vol. ii. p. 307) ; " The Metropolis of Christianity " 
(Ib. ch. v. p. 299). 

And again : " With all the Teutonic part of Latin Christendom, the belief in 
the supremacy of the Pope was coeval with their Christianity; it was an article of 
their original creed as much as the Redemption ; their apostles were commissioned 
by the Pope ; to him they humbly looked for instruction and encouragement, 
even almost for permission to advance upon their sacred adventure. Augustine, 
Boniface, Ebbo, Anschar, had been papal missionaries" (B. vii. ch. i. vol. iv. 
p. 4). 

VENERABLE BEDE, speaking of the conversion of our own country by Augus- 
tine and his monks, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, says : " And whereas he 
[Pope Gregory] bore the Pontifical power over all the world, and was placed over 
the Churches already reduced to the faith of truth, Jie made our nation, till tlicn 
given tip to idols, the Church of Christ" (Hist. Eccles., lib. ii. c. i). Compare 
Dean MILMAN'S chapter on the Conversion of England (B. iv. ch. iii. vol. ii. p. 
224 seq.); NEANDER (vol. v. p. 13 seq.) ; and GUIZOT (Hist, of [European 
Civilisation, Bonn's Eng. trans., vol. ii. p. 173, 174). MILMAN further remarks, 
that "a native clergy seems to have grown up more rapidly in Britain than in 
any other of the Teutonic kingdoms. But they were in general the admiring 
pupils of the Roman clergy. To them Rome was the centre and sotirce of the 
faith" &c. (loc. cit. p. 249). 

RANKE, the German Protestant historian, also says, that " together with the 
doctrines of Christianity, a veneration for Rome and for the Holy See, such as 
had never before existed in any nation, found place among the Germanic Britons " 
(Hist, of the Popes, Bonn's edit., vol. i. p. n). 

On St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, and the conversion of that country to 
the faith of Rome, see NEANDER (vol. v. pp. 62, 65, 66, 69, 75, 87, 88, 98, &c.), 
and MILMAN (B. iv. ch. v. vol. ii. p. 295 seq.}. NEANDER gives Boniface's oath 
of obedience to the Pope (loc. cit. p. 66). 

RANKE says: "Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, was an Anglo-Saxon ; 
this missionary, largely sharing in the veneration professed by his nation for St. 
Peter and his successors, had from the beginning voluntarily pledged himself to 
abide faithfully by all the regulations of the Roman See: to this promise he most 
religiously adhered. On all the German Churches founded by him was imposed 
an extraordinary obligation to obedience. Every Bishop was required expressly 
to promise that his whole life should be passed in unlimited obedience to the 
Romish Church, to St. Peter and his representatives" (op. cit. p. 12). 

M. GUIZOT says that "for him [Boniface] Rome is the centre, the Pope is the 
chief of Christianity" (op. cit. vol. ii. p. 175). He gives his oath of submission 
to the Pope, and his account of the first German Council, held under his presi- 
dency in 742, and adds : " Of a surety, it is impossible more formally to submit 
the new Church, the new Christian nations, to the Papal power" (Ib. p. 177). 

MILMAN, after describing his^" wonderful successes," says: "Boniface had 



( 27 ) 

"mustard-seed" of the Parable, which, from a very small 
germ, quickly grew and increased until it "became a great 
tree" overshadowing the earth, and giving shelter and protec- 
tion to "the fowls of the air;" SHE ALONE the "net" which, 
cast into the sea of the world, has "gathered of every kind ; " 
SHE ALONE " the leaven" x which, " hid in the three measures 
of meal" (the three parts, then known, of the world), has 
effected a change and spiritual revolution throughout the 
earth ; and will not cease to do so " until the whole be leavened" 
i.e., until the Faith of Christ and her Spiritual Dominion shall 
have been propagated and extended throughout every part 
and corner of the world. 2 



new empire to Christianity, and was placed over it as spiritual sovereign 
by the respectful gratitude of the Pope. He received the pall of a Metropolitan, 
and was empowered as primate to erect bishoprics throughout Germany. Again 
he visited Rome, and was invested by Gregory III., the new Pope, with full 
powers as representative of the Apostolic See " (loc. tit. p. 300). 

For an account of the conversion to Christianity of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, 
and other Northern countries (now Protestant), by missionaries sent by the Popes, 
in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the Protestant reader can refer to 
NEANDER (vol. v. pp. 373-477), or Dean JOSEPH MILNER'S Church History 
(cent. viii. ch. v., cent. ix. ch. v. &c.). 

1 Regarding the prophetic significance of these three parables of the mustard- 
seed, the net, and the leaven see the notes from TRENCH On the Parables (sup. 
pp. 6, 7) ; also GRESWELL On the Parables (vol. ii. pp. 175 seq., 259, 261, 265). 

Several Protestant writers, despairing of finding any non- Catholic Church to 
which these parables could be applied, have actually dared to maintain that they 
were prophetic of the universality of the kingdom of Antichrist or of Satan, and 
of the universal corruption of Christianity, through the spread of "Popery" and 
the "dominion of a proud world-hierarchy;" thus exactly fulfilling our Lord's 
prediction : " If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, much more 
them of His household'' 1 (Matt. x. 25, and xii. 24-28). Dr. TRENCH speaks of the 
holders of this opinion as being " little bands of modern Separatists, whose motive 
of course is obvious" (p. 112); yet he takes the trouble to refute them at some 
length. 

- For copious information (chiefly in the form of Protestant testimonies) regard- 
ing Catholic Missions in modern times, the reader should consult Mr. MARSHALL'S 
work above mentioned. The Anglican CHURCH TIMES of January 23, iSSo, 
says : " Missions to the heathen have always been a strong point in the Roman 
Church. Her organisation for these enterprises is on so vast and complete a 
scale compared with any other branch of the Church ; the training of her ministers 
for distant spheres of labour is so directly pointed to the end to be attained ; their 
zeal and self-sacrifice causing them to exhibit the Church before the heathen as a 
body called to suffer for Christ's sake ; their entire freedom from earthly ties ; the 
implicit and unquestioning obedience which is required of them to the powers 
above them ; and last, and not least, the peculiar knack which Rome has with 



This CATHOLIC CHURCH of which the See of Peter was 
ever the acknowledged Centre and Head 1 ALONE was 2 (as 

few exceptions exercised, of putting the right man in the right place, have all 
conduced to attract and win the sympathies of heathen hearts. And while we 
acknowledge and admire the earnest zeal, and self-devotion, and perseverance 
which have characterised the missionaries themselves, we may recognise also a 
spirit of discretion in much of the instrumentality that is provided ; the numerous 
bodies sent out together, the establishment of sanctuaries and religious houses for 
the reception of catechumens and the education of orphans and native children, 
the preparation of elementary forms of instruction, such as those of Francis 
Xavier, for the use of the catechists in India, the community of living and 
austerity of habits invariably adopted, have doubtless contributed to the success 
which, however much exaggerated in many cases, and however ephemeral in 
others, has on the whole attended the missionary efforts of the Roman Communion 
in all parts of the globe." 

1 See CATHEDRA PETRI, 2d ed., Burns Gates. 

2 " The phrase 'Catholic Church,' " says M. RENAN, " speaking of the second 
century, "breaks upon us from all sides at once, as the name of THE GREAT 

COMMUNION WHICH IS DESTINED THENCEFORTH TO COME DOWN THE AGES IN 

UNBROKEN UNITY" (Hibbert Lectures, 1880, Eng. trans., p. 164). 

"'The Clergy," says Dean MILMAN, "including the Monks and Friars, were 
ONE throughout Latin Christendom; and through them, to a great extent, the 
Latin Church was ONE. . . . The Pope's awful powers held in check the constant 
inevitable tendency to rebellion and contumacy, which was usually that of indi- 
vidual Prelates or small factions. ... On the whole, the Order of the Clergy was 
ONE FROM THE UTMOST EAST TO THE FARTHER WEST, FROM THE NORTH 

TO THE SOUTH " (Hist, of Lat. Christ., B. xiv. ch. i. vol. ix. pp. 25, 27). And 
again : " Latin Christendom, or rather universal Christendom, was ONE (except- 
ing those who were self-outlawed, or outlawed by the dominant authority from 
the Christian Monarchy), not only in the organisation of the all-ruling Hierarchy, 
and the admission of Monkhood ; it was ONE IN THE GREAT SYSTEM OF BELIEF. 
. . . The whole world was ONE IN THE POPULAR RELIGION " (Ib. ch. ii. pp. 53, 
54). M. GUIZOT, also, remarks that this great fact of "the UNITY of the Church, 
the UNITY of the Christian' society, despite all the diversities ,of time, place, 
domination, language, or origin," is one "which dominates over all, which char- 
acterises the Christian Church in general, and has, as it were, decided her destiny." 
" This," he adds, " is a great and glorious fact, and one which, from the fifth to 
the thirteenth century, has rendered immense services to humanity. The mere 
fact of the unity of the Church maintained some tie between countries and nations 
that everything else tended to separate ; under its influence, some general notions, 
some sentiments of a vast sympathy continued to be developed ; and from the 
very heart of the most frightful political confusion that the world has ever known 
arose, perhaps, the most extensive and the purest idea that has ever rallied man- 
kind the idea of spiritual society; for that is the philosophical name of the 
Church, the type which she wished to realise " (Hist, of European Civilisation, 
Bonn's Eng. trans., vol. ii. pp. 19, 20). 

Protestants often ask triumphantly "Where was the Unity of the Catholic 
Church at the time of the great PAPAL SCHISM (A.D. 1378-1417), during which 
the nations of Europe were divided in their allegiance to three contending Popes ? " 



( 29 ) 

she still is 1 ), the/' One Fold under One Shepherd" that great 
and illustrious Body or Society of Christians, whose exhibi- 
tion of supernatural and majestic Unity struck "the World" 
with awe and amazement, causing it to recognise the Divine 
Mission of her Founder and Head, so that " the kingdoms 

To which objection it may be replied : 1st, That the Church's Unity of Faith, 
Public Worship, and Sacraments, remained intact during that whole period ; 2dly, 
that what may be called the interregnum in the Church, caused by the controversy 
regarding the validity of the election of the claimants to the Papacy, was abnormal 
in its character and transient in its effects; and that the Church all along re- 
tained and ultimately exercised the power of determining who was or should 
be her validly elected Head. It was not promised to the Church that she should 
not be assaulted by the gates of hell (the Powers of Darkness), but that she should 
always prove victorious against them. 

1 Lord MACAULAY, in a well-known passage, says : " The Papacy remains, 
not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The 
Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world mission- 
aries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustine, and still confronting 
hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The 
number of her children is greater than in any former age. . . . She saw the 
commencement of all the Governments and of ail the ecclesiastical institutions that 
are now in the world ; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see 
the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot 
on Britain, before the Frank had crossed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still 
flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. 
And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New 
Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of 
London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's " (Essay on Ranke's Lives of the 
Popes]. 

As farther illustrating and corroborating what has been said above, regarding 
that spectacle of UNIVERSALITY and of MAJESTIC UNITY which the Catholic 
Church presents to the world at large, the following extracts from the leading 
articles and special correspondence of the chief English journals, at the time of 
the opening of the (Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, may perhaps be of interest 
to the reader : 

STANDARD (December loth, 1869) : " In historic importance, in traditional 
dignity, in the splendour of the associations that gather round its name, no 
Assembly in the world, past or present, can pretend to compare with the great 
Parliament of the Latin Church. The unbroken continuity of the history of that 
Church, its undeniable and uninterrupted descent from the Church founded by 
the Apostles, renders this Council . . . the immediate successor and representa- 
tive, in a sense in which no other Council can rival its claims, of the Council of 
Niccea, if not of the Council of Jerusalem. Nor is its actual power and conse- 
quence unworthy of its traditional heritage. ... It is the representative assembly, 
the omnipotent legislature of a compact and coherent body of Christians, whose 
number approaches more nearly to two than one hundred millions," &c. 

After referring to the attempts made by the enemies of the Pope and of the 
Church to hinder the assembling of the Council, the special correspondent 
(STANDARD, Dec. nth) says : "Nevertheless, all has been in vain; and the 
dispassionate observer is compelled to confess that the spectacle of so many 



( 30 ) 

of this world became tJie Kingdom of our Lord and of His 
Christ" (Rev. xi. 15). SHE ALONE possesses and alone 
claims to possess that supreme and unerring Teaching 
Authority, without which no such Unity could be guaranteed 
or preserved. 1 In and by HER ALONE have all those 

hundreds of Bishops, coming from the farthest quarters of the earth at the beck of 
an old man, powerless in all but spiritual thunderbolts, is one that, occurring in 
the nineteenth century, and especially at this period of it, is calculated to strike 
the believing with a pious admiration, and even the incredulous, like ourselves, 
with irrepressible astonishment." 

The DAILY NEWS (Dec. I4th) : " It must be admitted that, weak as is the 
temporal power of the Pope, no other Prince could have assembled such a body 
as met to-day in the Council-hall of St. Peter's, and no other could have provided 
them with such a magnificent temple. From the remotest quarters of the globe 
from a land that was but just heard of when the Council of Trent sat, from a 
land that was then wholly unknown, from Palestine and Syria, the cradles of 
Christianity ; from Persia, from China, from India, from Africa, from the Western 
Isles, as well as from the countries washed by the Mediterranean, men of various 
tongues and of diverse origin, men of great learning and of great age, have come 
together to this famous city, in obedience voluntary and spiritual obedience 
to the Pastor who claims to be the Successor of Peter, and the Vicegerent of God 
upon earth." 

The TIMES (Dec. l6th) : " Seven hundred Bishops, more or less, representing 
all Christendom, were seen gathered round one altar and one throne, partaking of 
the same Divine Mystery, and rendering homage, by turns, to the same spiritual 
authority and power. As they put on their mitres or took them off, and as they 
came to the steps of the altar or the foot of the common Spiritual Father, it was 

IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO FEEL THE UNITY AND THE POWER OF THE CHURCH WHICH 
THEY REPRESENTED." 

1 "In the Catholic Church," says a writer in the UNION REVIEW (May 
1875), "it was always an article of faith that our Lord, by the assistance and 
guidance of His Holy Spirit, preserved the whole Church, in her collective capa- 
city, from falling into error in her dogmatic teaching. But it was also a point of 
belief, which may be traced up to the Apostolic age, that in the administration of 
this teaching authority, the See of St. Peter held a supreme office ; that it was the 
centre of ecclesiastical operations, if we may use such a term ; that apart from it 
there would be no genuine orthodoxy, no true Catholicity; and that in all the 
great controversies which from time to time divided the Christian world, the most 
crucial test of truth was the adherence to any dogma by the See of Peter." 

"Though a few distinguished voices have been lifted up against the dogma 
of Papal Infallibility, they have indeed been, and continue to be, few and far- 
between. We believe there is but one Bishop out of the whole Romish 
Hierarchy who is not now inculcating the dogma, and that solitary one does not 
go beyond a passive resistance. . . . Rome, under the guidance of Pius IX., at 
least knows its own mind, which is more than can be said of perhaps any other 
influential branch of the Christian Church at the present moment. . . . Were 
Pius IX. to die to-morrow, he would leave the Roman Church far more powerful 
than he found it, and endowed with a far higher vitality" (STANDARD, June 
I9th, 1872). 



( 31 ) 

Prophecies been fulfilled that were uttered regarding the 
CHURCH OF CHRIST the KINGDOM OF THE MESSIAS; e.g., 
that " Kings should be her nursing fathers, and queens her 
nursing' mothers ; they sJwuld bovv down before her with their 
face toivard the earth, and lick up the dust of her feet ; " that 
" tJie Gentiles should come to Jier light, and kings to the bright- 
ness of her rising / . . . her gates should be open continually ; 
tliey should not be shut day nor night ; that men might bring 
unto her the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings might 
be brought: for the nation and kingdom that vvould not serve 
Jier should perish ; " that " no weapon formed against her 
should prosper, and every tongue that should arise in judgment 
against her she should condemn ; " that God's " Spirit that 
should be upon her, and His ivords which He would put in Jier 
mouth, should not depart out of her mouth, nor out of the mouth 
of her seed, nor out of the mouth of her seed's seed, from Jience- 
forth and for ever j " that "from tJie rising of the sun, even 
to the going down of the same, God's name should be great 
among the Gentiles, and in every place incense sliould be offered 
to His name, and a pnre offering; " that the Messias should 
be "for a light to the Gentiles, and for salvation unto the ends 
of the earth;" He "should have the. Gentiles for His inheri- 
tance, and tJie uttermost parts of the eartJi for His possession ; 
He sJiould rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the 
ends of the earth, all nations falling down before Him, all 
nations serving Him ; "and, finally, that, in this Church of 
the Messias, " the Lord God -would set up a Kingdom which 
should never be destroyed" and "against which the Gates of 
Hell should never prevail!' 

We conclude, therefore, that the ROMAN CATHOLIC 
CHURCH and she ALONE is the One true Catholic and 
Apostolic Church of Christ, the Church which He Himself 
founded, and with which, in the performance of her great 
office as Teacher of the nations, He Himself "//rt? Way, the 
Truth, and the Life" promised to abide "always, even to the 
end of the world;" and, consequently, that it is from HER 
voice and teaching alone that we can with certainty and 
security learn the entire Faith and body of Doctrines which 
He has revealed, "all things whatsoever He has commanded 
her to teach to all nations." 



>' "The universal aptness of a religious system for all stages of civilisation, and 
for all sorts and conditions of men, well befits its claim of divine origin. She is 
of all nations and of all times, that wonderful Church of Rome." KINGLAKE'S 
of hen, chap. xi. 

" Protestantism was the work of man ; and it appears in no other light even in 
the history which its own disciples have drawn of its origin." SCHLEGEL'S Philo- 
sophy of History, Bonn's 7th Eng. edit., p. 411. 

" Notwithstanding all his attempts to deface the work of God, man cannot blot 
out the eternal characters which distinguish truth from error." BALMEZ, Euro- 
pean Civilisation, Protestantism and Catholicity Compared, Eng. trans., p. 45. 



APPENDIX. 



Some Testimonies of Protestant and non-Christian Historians regarding 
the beneficial Action and Influence of the Catholic Church during 
the Early a?id Middle Ages, the early and providential Develop- 
ment of the Papal Power, &c., &c. 

M. ERNEST RENAN, the well-known French savant and sceptic, in the 
Hibbert Lectures, delivered in London in 1880, speaks as follows : 

"The origins of Christianity form the most heroic episode of the 
history of humanity. . . . This extraordinary movement, with which no 
other can be compared, came out of the heart of Judaism. But it is 
doubtful whether Judaism alone would have conquered the world. For 
this it was . . . above all needful that the new movement should transfer 
itself to the Greek and Latin world, and there awaiting the barbarians, 
should become as it were a leaven in the midst of those European races 
by means of which humanity accomplishes its destiny." * . . . (pp. 8, 9). 

" In order that Judea might make a religious conquest of the world, it 
was necessary that she should be blotted out from the roll of nations. . . . 
The victory of Rome was complete. . . . The national existence of the 
Jewish people was irretrievably lost ; but this was a piece of good fortune. 
The true glory of Judaism was the Christianity then in act of birth. And 
for Christianity, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was an advan- 
tage above all other. . . . The Romans thought that in tearing away the 
root they were at the same time tearing away the sucker ; but the sucker 
had already become a tree, with an independent life of its own" (pp. 104, 
115, 116). 

After showing that " in proportion as the Church of Jerusalem falls the 
Church of Rome rises," and that " while the Pope of Jerusalem would 
have smothered Christianity at the end of a century or two, the Pope of 
Rome has made it the religion of the world" (p. 122), he says : 

"The truth of what I have said is illustrated in a very important 
personage, who appears to have been at the head of the Roman Church 

1 M. KENAN'S remarks furnish a remarkable commentary on the words of St. 
PAUL : " If the fall of them [the Jews] be the riches of the -world, and the dinii- 
mition of them the riches of the Gentiles ; ... if the casting away of them be the 
reconciling of the world" &c. {Rom. xi. 12, 15, 20). 

C 



( 34 ) 

in the last years of the first century. ... I mean Clement of Rome. . . . 
The high rank which he held in the purely spiritual hierarchy of the 
Church of his times, and the unequalled credit which he enjoyed, are 
beyond doubt. His approval was a law in itself (Pseudo-Hermas, 
vis. ii. 4). All parties claimed his leadership, and desired to shelter 
themselves beneath his authority. . . . He is the first type of Pope which 
Church history presents to us. His lofty personality, which legend makes 
more lofty still, was, after that of Peter, the holiest figure of primitive 
Christian Rome. Succeeding ages looked upon his venerable face as 
that of a mild and grave legislator, a perpetual homily of submission 
and respect. 

" Already the idea of a certain primacy belonging to his Church was 
beginning to make its way to the light. The right of warning other 
Churches and of composing their differences was conceded to it. 
Similar privileges so at least it was believed had been accorded to 
Peter by the other disciples (Luke xxii. 32). Thus a bond which 
gradually grew closer was established between Peter and Rome. Grave 
dissensions tore in pieces the Church of Corinth (Hegesip. in Euseb. 
Hist. Eccles. iii. 16, iv. 22). The Roman Church, consulted as to these 
troubles, replied in a letter which is still extant. It is anonymous, but 
a very ancient tradition assigns the composition of it to Clement " 
(pp. 124, 125). 

" The Roman Church was henceforth the Church of order, of rule, of 
subordination. Its fundamental principle was that humility and submis- 
sion were of more account than the sublimest gifts. Its letter to the 
Corinthians is the first manifesto of the principle of authority made 
within the Christian Church" (p. 127). 

" In the primitive Christian community, the importance of Churches 
was in proportion to their apostolic nobility. The guarantee of ortho- 
doxy was the diadoche, the Episcopal succession by which the great 
Churches were connected with the Apostles. A direct succession was 
a very strong warrant of agreement in doctrine ; the greatest possible 
importance was attached to it. But what shall we say of a Church 
founded both by Peter and Paul? It is clear that such a Church would 
be regarded as having a real superiority over all others. To have suc- 
ceeded in establishing this belief was the masterpiece of that cleverness 
which characterised the Church of Rome. By the time of Antoninus Pius 
[A.D. 138] almost everybody had come to believe that Peter and Paul had 
in perfect agreement founded Christianity at Rome, and had sealed the 
work with their blood. The ecclesiastical destiny of Rome was thence- 
forth fixed. When her part in the profane world was played out, this 
extraordinary city was destined to play another and a sacred part, a part 
like that of Jerusalem " (p. 148). 

After mentioning the attempt of Valentinus to establish a Gnostic 

school in Rome, and his excommunication by Pope Hyginus, he says : 

" The centre of a future Catholic orthodoxy was plainly here. Pius, 

who succeeded Hyginus, showed the same firmness in defending the 



( 35 ) 

purity of the faith. Cerdo, Marcion, Valentinus, Marcellinus, are 
removed from the Church by the sentence of Pius. In the reign of 
Antoninus [A.D. 138 seq.\ the germ of the Papacy already exists in a 
very definite form. The Church of Rome shows itself increasingly 
indifferent to those visionary speculations which were the delight of 
minds full of the intellectual activity of the Greeks, but, at the same 
time, corrupted by the dreams of the East. The organisation of 
Christian society was the chief work pursued at Rome. That wonder- 
ful city brought to this task the exclusively practical genius and the 
powerful moral energy which she has applied in so many different 
ways. Almost careless of speculation, decisively hostile to novelties in 
doctrine, she presided, as a mistress already practised in the art, over 
all the changes which took place in the discipline and the hierarchy of 
the Church." 

" What was in process of development in the Christian Church about 
the year 120 or 130 was the Episcopate. Now the creation of the 
Episcopate was evidently the work of Rome" . . . (pp. 148-151). After 
pronouncing this to be a " complete transformation " in the government 
of the Church, 1 he says : 

" Nevertheless, this transformation was the essential condition of the 
energy of Christianity. And a concentration of powers became at once 
necessary when these Churches grew up to be tolerably numerous : the 
relations between these little pious societies were possible only so long 
as they had acknowledged representatives entitled to act for them. It is 
besides indisputable that, without the Episcopate, Churches brought into 
union for a moment by the recollection of Jesus would soon have been 
scattered. Divergencies of doctrine, differences in turn of mind, above 
all, rivalries, unsatisfied self-appreciations, would have produced their 
characteristic result of disunion and disintegration without end " (p. 158). 

"Thanks to the Church of Rome, 2 the religion of Jesus thus acquired 
a certain solidity and consistency. The great danger of Gnosticism, 
which threatened to divide Christendom into innumerable sects, was 
averted. The phrase ' Catholic Church ' breaks upon us from all sides 
at once, as the name of the great communion which is destined thence- 
forth to come down the ages in unbroken unity. And the character of 
this Catholicity is already sufficiently visible. The Montanists are 
regarded as sectaries ; the Marcionites are convicted of falsifying apos- 
tolical doctrine ; the different Gnostic schools are more and more repelled 
from the bosom of the general Church. There is, then, something which 
is neither Montanism, nor Marcionism, nor Gnosticism unsectarian 

1 It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to observe, that M. KENAN'S expression of 
erroneous opinions, on this and some other points, does not detract from the 
general value of his testimony regarding the predominant authority of the Church 
of Rome at this early period. 

2 Mr. PALMER of Oxford also says: "We find that the Roman Church was 
zealous to maintain the true faith from the earliest period, condemning and 
expelling the Gnostics, Artemonites, &c. ; and during the Arian mania it was 
the bulwark of the Catholic Faith" (On the Church, vol. ii. pt. vi. ch. 3). 



( 36 ) 

Christianity, the Christianity of the majority of Bishops, resisting and 
using all the sects, having, if you will, none but negative characteristics, 
but by those negative characteristics preserved from pietistic aberrations 
and dissolvent rationalism" (pp. 164, 165). 

After giving a sketch of the formation of Christendom, and remarking 
that " the Empire was, as it were, the mould in which the new religion 
took shape : the inner framework, the limits, the hierarchical divisions 
of the Church were those of the Empire ; " and that " under Marcus 
Aurelius the Episcopate is completely ripe : the Papacy exists in germ " 
(p. 169), he continues : 

"ROME was the place in which this great idea of Catholicity was 
worked out. More and more every day it became the capital of Chris- 
tianity^ and took the place of Jeriisalem as the religions centre of 
humanity. Its Church claimed a precedence over all others which was 
generally recognised (Iren. iii. 3; Tertull. Prescript. 21, 36 ; Cyprian, 
Epist. 52, 55, 67, 71, 75 ; Firmilian). All the doubtful questions which 
agitated the Christian conscience came to Rome to ask for arbitration, 
if not decision. Men argued, certainly not in a very logical way, that as 
Christ had made Cephas the corner-stone of His Church, the privilege 
ought to be inherited by his successors. . . . The Bishop of Rome 
became the Bishop of bishops, he who admonished all others. Rome 
proclaims her right a dangerous right of excommunicating those who 
do not walk step by step with her. ... At the end of the second century 
we can already recognise, by signs which it is impossible to mistake, the 
spirit which in 1870 will proclaim the infallibility of the Pope. The 
writing of which the fragment known as the Canon of Muratori formed a 
part, and which was produced at Rome about the year 1 80 A.D., shows 
us Rome already defining the Canon of Scripture, alleging the martyrdom 
of Peter as the foundation of Catholicity, repudiating Montanism and 
Gnosticism alike. Irenasus (Lib. iii. 3) refutes all heresies by reference to 
the belief of this Church, ' the greatest, the oldest, the most illustrious, 
which possesses, in virtue of an unbroken succession, the true tradition 
of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and to which, because of its Primacy, 
all the rest of the Church ought to have recourse'" (pp. 172-174). 

" This precedence of the Church of Rome only became more marked 
in the third century. The Bishops of Rome showed a rare ability in 
avoiding theological questions, while they kept themselves to the front 
in all matters of organisation and administration. The tradition of the 
Roman Church passes for the most ancient of all (Origen, in Euseb. 
Hist. Eccles. vi. 14). Cornelius takes the first place in the affair of Nova- 
tianism : we see him, in especial, depriving Italian Bishops and nomi- 
nating their successors (Letter of Cornelius in Euseb. vi. 43). Rome 
was also the central authority of the African Churches (Tertull. Frees. 21 ; 
Cyprian. Epist. 52, 55, 71, 75)" (P- J 76). 

After speaking of the injury done to the City of Rome by the Emperor 
Constantine's transference of the seat of government to Constantinople, 
and by the invasions of barbarians that followed, he says : 



( 37 ) 

" Rome's first revenge is taken in the gravity and depth of her organ- 
ising spirit. What men are St. Sylvester, St. Damasus, St. Gregory the 
Great ! With admirable courage Rome labours for the conversion of 
the barbarians ; she attaches them to herself ; she makes them her clients, 
her subjects. The masterpiece of her policy was her alliance with the 
Carolingian House, and the bold stroke by which she revived in that 
family the Empire which had been dead for 300 years. The Church of 
Rome then lifts herself up more powerful than ever, and again, for eight 
centuries more, becomes the centre of all Western politics " (pp. 198, 199) 
'Rms AX'S Hibbert Lectures on the Influence of the Institutions, Thought ', 
and Culture of Rome on Christianity and the Development of the Catholic 
Church, Eng. trans., 1880). 

M. GuiZOT, the Protestant historian of France, speaking of the fifth 
century, when the Roman Empire was in the agonies of dissolution, and 
the whole of Europe was inundated by hordes of barbarians, 1 says : 

" I do not think that I say more than the truth in affirming that 
it ivas the Christian Church which saved Christianity ; it was the 
Church with its institutions, its magistrates, and its power that vigorously 
resisted both the internal dissolution of the Empire and barbarism ; 
which conquered the barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and 
the principle of civilisation between the Roman and barbarian worlds. 
... In the midst of that deluge of material force which at this period 
overwhelmed society, there was an immense benefit in the presence of a 
moral influence, a moral power, a power which derived all its force from 
convictions, from belief, from moral sentiments. Had there been no 
Christian Church, the whole world would have been abandoned to mere 
material force. The Church alone exercised a moral power" (Guizox's 
Hist. Gen. de la Civilisation en Europe, 3d ed., Paris, 1840, 2^me Lecon). 

" The Church was a regularly organised society, having its principles, 
its rules, its discipline, and animated with an ardent desire of extending 
its influence, 2 of conquering its conquerors. Among the Christians of 
this period, among the Christian clergy, there were men who had thought 

a " Let us reflect for a moment," says M. GOSSELIN, " on the character of the 
barbarous hordes which, after the close of the fourth century, partitioned among 
themselves the members of the Roman Empire in the West. Completely ignorant 
of the arts and sciences and of civilisation, they knew no other occupation but 
hunting and war ; no law but force ; no glory but conquest ; and, far from feeling 
the inconveniences and disorder of this savage state, they professed a sovereign 
contempt for a mode of life more refined. The Christian religion, which they all 
embraced, softened by degrees their ferocious manners ; but this inestimable 
effect of their conversion was slow and insensible ; the majority of them long 
retained their ancient habits that is, their inconstant, violent, and ungovernable 
temper ; their passionate taste for hunting and war ; their profound contempt for 
the arts and sciences ; and especially the spirit of insubordination and independ- 
ence, which seemed to be the most deeply marked trait in their character" 
(The Power of the Popes during the Middle Ages, Eng. trans., vol. ii. p. 40). 

2 "After the fifth century, Papacy took the lead in the conversion of the 
Pagans " (Guizoi's Hist, of Civilisation in France, Bonn's Eng. trans., vol. ii. 
P- 173). 



( 38 ) 

upon all moral and political questions, who had decided opinions and 
energetic sentiments upon all subjects, and a vivid desire to propagate 
and give them empire. No society ever made more vigorous efforts to 
make her influence felt, and to mould to her own form the world around 
her, than the Christian Church from the fifth to the tenth century. She 
had, in a manner, assailed barbarism on all points, to civilise by subduing 
it " (Ib. 3eme Legon, p. 86). 

" All the civil elements of modern society [municipal government, the 
feudal system and royalty] were either in their infancy or in decrepitude. 
The Church alone was young and organised ; she alone had acquired a 
settled form, and retained all the vigour of her prime ; she alone had 
both activity and order, energy and a system, that is, the two great 
means of influence. . . . The Church had, moreover, agitated all the 
great questions which concern man ; she was solicitous about all the 
problems of his nature, about all the chances of his destiny. Hence, her 
influence on modern civilisation has been immense, greater perhaps than 
has ever been imagined by her most ardent adversaries or her most 
zealous advocates. Absorbed either in her defence or in aggression, they 
considered her only in a polemical point of view, and they have failed, 
I am convinced, in judging her with fairness, and in measuring her in all 
her dimensions" (Ib. 5eme Legon, p. 132). 

The Rev. H. MlLMAN, D.D. (late Dean of St. Paul's), says : 
" Christianity, in its Latin form, which for centuries was to be its 
most powerful, enduring, and prolific development, wanted, for her 
stability and unity of influence, a capital and a centre ; and Rome might 
seem deserted by her Emperors for the express purpose of allowing the 
spiritual monarchy to grow up without any dangerous collision against 
the civil government. The Emperors had long withdrawn from Rome as 
the royal residence. Of those who bore the title, one ruled in Constan- 
tinople, and, more and more absorbed in the cares and calamities of the 
Eastern sovereignty, became gradually estranged from the affairs of the 
West. . . . The Western Emperor lingered for a time in inglorious 
obscurity among the marshes of Ravenna, till at length the faint shadow 
of monarchy melted away, and a barbarian assumed the power and the 
appellation of Sovereign of Italy. Still, of the barbarian kings, not one 
ventured to fix himself in the ancient capital, or to inhabit'the mouldering 
palaces of the older Caesars. . . . 

" It was not solely as a Christian Bishop, and Bishop of that city 
which was still, according to the prevailing feeling, the capital of the 
world, but as the successor of St. Peter, of him who was now acknow- 
ledged to be the head of the Apostolic body, that the Roman Pontiff 
commanded the veneration of Rome and of Christendom. ... At the 
commencement of the fifth century, the lineal descent of the Pope from 
St. Peter was an accredited tenet of Christianity. . . . 

" Everything tended to confirm, nothing to impede or to weaken, the 
gradual condensation of the supreme ecclesiastical power in the Supreme 



( 39 ) 

Bishop. The majesty of the notion of one all-powerful ruler, to which 
the world had been so long familiarised in the Emperors ; the discord 
and emulation among the other prelates, both of the East and West, and 
the manifold advantage of a supreme arbiter ; the unity of the visible 
Church, which was becoming or had indeed become the dominant 
idea of Christendom ; all seemed to demand, or, at least, had a strong 
tendency to promote and to maintain, the necessity of one Supreme 
Head. . . . 

" In the West, throughout Latin Christendom, the Roman See, in anti- 
quity, in dignity, in the more regular succession of its prelates, stood alone 
and unapproachable. In the great Eastern bishoprics the holy lineage 
had been already broken and confused by the claims of rival prelates, 
by the usurpation of Bishops accounted heretical, at the present period 
Arians or Macedonians or Apollinarians, later Nestorians or Mono- 
physites" 1 (MiLMAN's Hist, of Latin Christianity, Book ii. ch. i. vol. i. 
p. 104 seq., ed. 1867). 

Speaking of the fall of Rome under Alaric, A.D. 410, he says : "That 
which might have appeared the most fatal blow to Roman greatness, as 
dissolving the spell of Roman empire, the capture, the conflagration, 
the plunder, the depopulation of Rome by the barbarian Goths, tended 
directly to establish and strengthen the spiritual supremacy of Rome. 
It was pagan Rome, the Babylon of sensuality, pride, and idolatry, 
which fell before the triumphant Alaric ; the Goths were the instruments 
of Divine vengeance against paganism, which lingered in this its last 
stronghold. Christianity hastened to disclaim all interest, all sympathy, 
in the fate of ' the harlot that sat on the seven hills ' " (Id. p. 120). 

"However the first appalling intelligence of this event shook the 
Roman world to its centre, and the fearful scene of pillage, violation, and 
destruction by fire and sword was imagined to surpass in its horrors 
everything recorded in profane or sacred history, yet the shock passed 
away, and Rome quietly assumed her second, her Christian empire. . . . 
Innocent [the Pope] returned to a city, if in some parts ruined and deso- 
late, now entirely Christian : the ancient religion was buried under the 
ruins. . . . Babylon has fallen, and fallen for ever ; the City of God, at 
least the centre and stronghold of the City of God, is in Christian Rome" 
(/. pp. 130, 136, 138). 

" The Pontificate of Leo the Great [A.D. 440] is one of the epochs in 
the history of Latin, or rather of universal Christianity. Christendom, 
wherever mindful of its Divine origin and of its proper humanising and 
hallowing influence, might turn away in shame from these melancholy and 
disgraceful [religious] contests in the East. On the throne of Rome alone, 

1 " In the East, religion ceased more and more to be an affair of pure religion. 
It was mingled up with all the intrigues of the Imperial Court, with all the furies 
of faction in the great cities. . . . The rivalry of the Sees darkened into the 
fiercest personal hostility. . . . The deeper the East was sunk in anarchy and 
confusion, the: more*" commanding the stately superiority of Rome" (Ib. ch. iii. 
PP- 177-195). 



( 4 ) 

of all the greater Sees, did religion maintain its majesty, its sanctity ', its 
piety; and, if it demanded undue deference ; the world would not be 
inclined rigidly to question pretensions supported as well by such con- 
scious power as by such singular and unimpeachable virtue ; and by 
such inestimable benefits conferred on Rome, on the Empire, on civili- 
sation. . . .Supremacy^ held by so firm and vigorous a hand as that 
of Leo, might seem almost necessary to Christendom " (Ib. ch. iv. pp. 
228, 254). 

Speaking of the close of the sixth century of Christianity, when 
" anarchy threatened the whole West of Europe, and had already almost 
enveloped Italy in ruin and destruction," Milman says : " Now was 
the crisis in which THE PAPACY must reawaken its obscured and 
suspended life. It was the only power which lay not entirely and abso- 
lutely prostrate before the disasters of the times a power which had an 
inherent strength, and might resiime its majesty. It was this power 
which was most imperatively required to preserve all which was to 
survive out of the crumbling wreck of Roman civilisation. To Western 
Christianity was absolutely necessary a centre, standing alone, strong in 
traditionary reverence and in acknowledged claims to supremacy. Even 
the perfect organisation of the Christian hierarchy might in all human 
probability have fallen to pieces in perpetual conflict ; it might have 
degenerated into a half-secular feudal caste, with hereditary benefices, 
more and more entirely subservient to the civil authority, a priesthood of 
each nation or each tribe, gradually sinking to the intellectual or religious 
level of the nation or tribe. ON THE RISE OF A POWER BOTH CONTROL- 
LING AND CONSERVATIVE HUNG, HUMANLY SPEAKING, THE LIFE AND 

DEATH OF CHRISTIANITY OF CHRISTIANITY AS A PERMANENT, 
AGGRESSIVE, EXPANSIVE, AND, TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, UNIFORM SYS- 
TEM. There must be a counterbalance to barbaric force, to the unavoid- 
able anarchy of Teutonism, with its tribal, or at the utmost national, 
independence, forming a host of small, conflicting, antagonistic kingdoms. 
. . . It is impossible to conceive what had been the confusion, the lawless- 
ness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages without the mediaeval Papacy ; 
and of the mediaeval Papacy the real father is Gregory the Great " (Id. 
Book iii. ch. vii. vol. ii. pp. 100-102). 

Speaking of the seventh century, he says : " It was Christianity alone 
which maintained some kind of combination among the crumbling frag- 
ments of the Roman Empire. . . . Christianity alone was a bond of 
union, strong and enduring. The Teutonic kingdoms acknowledged their 
allegiance to the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome : Rome was the centre 
and capital of Western Christendom" (Ib. Book iv. ch. iii. vol. ii. p. 225), 
" The Metropolis of Christianity" (ch. v. p. 299). 

After giving an account of the conversion of England, Germany, and 
other countries by the Missionaries sent by the Popes in the seventh and 
eighth centuries, he says : " All these conquests of Christianity were, in 
a certain sense, the conquests of the Roman See ; . . . reverence for 
Rome penetrated with the gospel to the remotest parts. Germany was 



converted to Latin Christianity. Rome was the source, the centre, the 
regulating authority recognised by the English apostles of the Teutons. 
The clergy were constantly visiting Rome as the religious capital of the 
world, to do homage to the head of Western Christendom, to visit the 
shrines of the Apostles, the more devout to obtain reliques, the more 
intellectual, knowledge, letters, arts " (Ib, ch. vi. p. 307). 

" Such was the power of religion in those times, that not merely did it 
enable the clergy to dictate their policy to armed and powerful sovereigns, 
to arrest barbarian invasion, and to snatch, as it were, conquests already 
in their rapacious hands ; in every quarter of Western Europe kings were 
seen abdicating their thrones, placing themselves at the feet of the Pope 
as humble penitents, casting off their pomp, and submitting to the 
privations and the discipline of monks" (Ib. Book iv. ch. xi. vol. iii. 
P- 6). 

Speaking of the causes of the degradation of the Papacy in the tenth 
century, he says : " In the tenth century the few reflecting minds might 
not without reason apprehend the approaching dissolution of the world. 
A vast anarchy seemed to spread over Western Christendom. It is 
perhaps the darkest period in the history of every country in Europe. 
The Pagan Magyars, more terrible even than the Islamite Saracens and 
the Pagan Northmen, now burst upon Europe. . . . The Magyars, or 
Hungarians, seemed as hordes of savages or of wild beasts let loose upon 
mankind. They burst unexpectedly upon Christendom in swarms of 
which the source seemed unknown and inexhaustible. Indiscriminate 
massacre seemed their only war law ; they were bound by no treaties, 
respected no boundaries. Civilisation, Christianity, withered before their 
hosts. . . . They rushed down the Alps ; Italy lay open before them. 
Splendid Pavia, with its forty-three churches, was in ashes. . . . Rome 
beheld at no great distance the flame of*their devastation ; they spread 
to the very extremity of the peninsula. l . . . The anarchy of Italy 
led to the degradation of the Papacy" (Book v. ch. xi. vol. iii. pp. 
279-282). 

" The devout indignation of Baronius as to these times 2 arose no 
doubt in great part from the severe but honest asceticism of his 
character, and his horror at this violation of his high notions of sacer- 
dotal sanctity by what appeared to him far more unseemly and unpar- 
donable criminality than arrogance, avarice, or cruelty. His fears, too, 
lest he should be accused of an immoral partiality by the slightest 
extenuation, or even by a dispassionate examination of such vices "(of 

1 " The Hungarians for half a century were the common terror of Christendom, 
from their first irruption about A.D. 884 to A.D. 936, the date of the first great 
victory of Henry the Fowler. Gradually the Magyars settled down within the 
limits of modern Hungary. At the beginning of the next century Christianity had 
entirely subdued them, and with a kind of prophetic instinct had arrayed this valiant 
nation as a future outguard against the Mohammedan Turks ; their King Stephen 
was a Saint" (MiLMAN, loc. cit., p. 280). 

" Milman is here referring to the very dark picture drawn* by Cardinal BARONIUS 
of the condition of the Papacy in the tenth century. 



( 42 ) 

some of the Popes of that age), " has led him to exaggerate rather than 
soften the monstrous enormities of these times. And the happy thought, 
happy in a thoroughgoing controversialist, that the deeper the degrada- 
tion of the Papacy, the more wonderful, and therefore the more mani- 
festly of God, its restoration to power, removed every remaining repug- 
nance to his abandonment of all the Popes during the tenth century to 
historical infamy. . . . Luitprand is the chief, the only authority on 
which Baronius rests" 1 (Ib. Book v. ch. xi. p. 288, note). 

Of Pope Leo IX. (A.D. ic>54)Milman says : " Leo came forth to Europe, 
not only with the power and dignity, but with the austere holiness, the 
indefatigable religious activity, the majestic virtue, which became the 
Head of Christendom. ... In this single spiritual campaign [his reli- 
gious visitation of Europe], by the calm dignity of his holiness, by his 
appeal to the strong religious reverence of Christendom, he had restored 
the Papacy to all its former authority over the minds of men " (Id. Book 
vi. ch. i. vol. iii. pp. 373, 382). 



NEANDER, the German (Protestant) Church historian, speaking of the 
conflict of the Church with the Empire under Pope Gregory VII. (Hilde- 
brand), says : 

1 This fact is important, inasmuch as the learned MURATORI ("whose accu- 
racy," says HALLAM, "is in general almost implicitly to be trusted, and whose 
plain integrity speaks in all his writings," Middle Ages, ch. iii. p. I, note) charges 
Luitprand with having " given credit to all the pasquinades and defamatory libels 
of the times" (Anna!, v. ii. 16, 36, 43, &c.). 

"The scandals given by some occupants of the Papal Chair," says a Catholic 
writer, " are a fruitful theme of reproach, on which Protestants delight to 
expatiate ; yet if we consider the turbulence of the times, the total disorganisation 
of society, the temporary ascendancy obtained at Rome by some petty potentates, 
the national partialities which favoured some intruders through jealousy of 
German influence, we shall not be astonished that in the tenth and eleventh 
centuries some instances occurred of wicked and ambitious men who seized on 
the reins of government." In regard to the charges made against various Popes 
in the same or following centuries, this author observes : " The character of 
several Popes has suffered unjustly from the interested misrepresentations of 
rivals or their partisans, as also of the adherents of schismatical emperors and 
kings. National jealousies led the Italians to satirise the French Popes who sat 
at Avignon, while the French viewed with no partiality several who sat at Rome. 
The civil relations of the Pontiff to his subjects have often cast odium on the 
exercise of his ecclesiastical authority, and his political associations with various 
princes have contributed in no slight degree to excite the rancour and provoke the 
animadversions of writers of other nations. Certain historians assume the air of 
candour by reciting the very words of some contemporary who has recorded his 
view of the personal character or public acts of an individual Pope, without 
reflecting that he may have mistaken rumour for facts, and followed the bias of 
partisanship to the prejudice of truth and justice. I feel it unnecessary to enter 
into a detailed vindication of the various Pontiffs whose character is more gener- 
ally the object of attack ; but I fearlessly say, that considering the long succes- 
sion of Popes, the convulsions of society, the vicissitudes of Rome, and the end- 
less variety of circumstances in which the Popes have been placed, it is nothing 
short of a miracle that, in general, their character has been pure and exalted, 
whilst their succession has been inviolably maintained." 



( 43 ) 

" The great question was . . . whether the system of the Church 
theocracy, the spiritual universal monarchy, should come off victorious 
in the contest with a rude secular power, or should be laid prostrate 
at its feet. . . . The corruption of the Church, threatening its utter 
secularisation, had now reached its highest pitch, and that very cir- 
cumstance had called forth a reformatory reaction on the part of the 
Church. Such a reaction could, however, under the existing conditions, 
ONLY proceed 'from the side of this Church Theocracy?- since those who were 
most zealous against the abuses that had crept in were governed by this 
spiritual tendency. . . . Gregory was certainly inspired with some higher 
motive than seltish ambition, a selfish love of domination. . . . There 
were men animated by a warm zeal for the welfare of the Church, and 
against the deep-rooted abuses of the times, who expected from this 
imperial sovereignty of the Church, wielded by the Popes, the correction 
of all evils. . . . 

" It was by the degeneracy of the clergy, and the confusion existing in 
all parts of the Church constitution, that the reforming tendencies of the 
Hildebrandian epoch had been called forth. A part of the abuses which 
had crept in, those which the rude arbitrary proceedings of monarchs had 
introduced, were thoroughly counteracted by the triumph of the Hilde- 
brandian system; a great zeal for the reformation of the clergy and of the 
Church life, after the pattern of the primitive Apostolical Church, as it 
presented itself to the imagination of the men of this period, commenced 
from this epoch. A bond of union was here presented between all the 
opponents of the reigning corruption, all men in all Churches who were 
zealous for a strict severity of morals among the clergy, and the worthy 
celebration of the offices of worship. . . . The Hildebrandian epoch of 
reform was accompanied with the outpouring of a spirit of compunction 
and repentance on the Western nations" (NEANDER'S Hist, of the Church, 
Eng. trans., Bohn's edit., vol. vii. pp. in, 112, 284, 322). 2 

1 Comp. GUIZOT, Lect. vi. : "There was within the whole Church but one 
force adequate to it, and that was the Court of Rome, the Papacy." 

" That the outpouring of a very different spirit accompanied the Lutheran epoch 
of " reform," will appear from the testimonies hereafter cited. 

NEANDER elsewhere speaks of the immense good done by the Monastic Orders, 
and especially by those monks "who travelled about as preachers of repentance, 
and who sided with the Popes in combating the prevailing corruption of manners 
and the vicious clergy "(/<?. vol. vii. p. 133. See pp. 330, 331, 339, 341 seq., 
349 seq., 372-399, &c.). In short, he considers that "to the epochs that mark 
the commencement of a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit may be reckoned the 
opening of the twelfth century ; and the after effects of the religious awakening, 
which then began among the Christian nations of the West, extend far into the 
period now before us. . . . The religious life was continually receiving a fresh 
impulse from influences of various kinds : from the vigorous measures of Gregory 
VII. to promote a reform in the whole Church ; from the impressions produced 
on the multitude by the preaching of the Crusades; from the effects wrought by 
distinguished preachers of the clerical, and more especially of the monastic order, 
who itinerated through the countries, exhorting men to repentance ; from the 
founding of the two Orders of mendicant friars, &c." (Ib. p. 406. See also pp. 
483, 484, 492). 



( 44 ) 

Colonel MITCHELL observes : "Deep and indelible is the debt 'which 
religion and civilisation owe to the early Roman Pontiffs and to the 
Church of Rome. They strove long and nobly to forward the cause of 
human improvement, and it is difficult to say what other power could 
have exercised so beneficial an influence over the fierce and fiery nations 
who established themselves on the ruins of the Roman Empire, after 
rooting out all that remained of ancient art and ancient knowledge. Nor 
were their efforts confined within these territorial limits : monks and 
missionaries, disregarding personal danger, penetrated into the forests of 
Germany and into the distant regions of the North, and, unappalled by 
the deaths of torture to which so many holy men had fallen victims, 
preached to heathens and barbarians the mild doctrines of Christianity, 
which only sprung up in Europe watered by the blood of saints and 
martyrs. Even the efforts of the Church to interpose its spiritual power 
in the direction of temporal affairs, and to control the conduct of kings 
and princes, were beneficial in an age when the clergy alone possessed 
whatever learning and knowledge were extant ; and the uniformity of 
belief which rendered all the Western Churches dependent on the autho- 
rity of the Pope an authority so greatly enlightened, when contrasted 
with the general darkness of the times became a principal cause of the 
progress and prosperity of the Catholic world" (MITCHELL'S Life of 
Wallenstein, pp. 4, 5, edit. 1837). 

M. ANCILLON, a French Calvinist, says : "During the Middle Ages, 
when there was no social order, the Papacy alone perhaps saved Europe 
from litter barbarism. It created bonds of connection between the most 
distant nations ; it was a common centre, a rallying-point for isolated 
states. It was a supreme tribunal established in the midst of universal 
anarchy ; and its decrees were sometimes as respectable as they were 
respected ; it prevented and arrested the despotism of the Emperors and 
diminished the evils of the feudal system" (Tableau des Revolutions du 
Systeme Politique de V Europe, vol. i. Introduct., pp. 133, 157). 

The German Protestant Church historian STAUDLEIN says : 
"The Papacy was productive of many beneficial effects. ... It 
united in one common bond the different European nations, furthered 
their mutual intercourse, and became a channel for the communication 
of the arts and sciences, and without it the fine arts, doubtless, would not 
have attained to so high a degree of perfection. The Papal power restrained 
political despotism, and from the rude multitude kept off many of the 
vices of barbarism " (Universal Church History, Hanover, 1806, p. 203). 

HERDER, another eminent Protestant writer, says : 

" It is doubtless true that the Roman hierarchy was a necessary power, 

without which there would have been no cheek upon the untutored nations 

of the Middle Ages. Without it, Europe would have fallen under the 

power of a despot, would have become the theatre of interminable con- 



( 45 ) 

flicts, and have been converted into a Mongolian desert " (Ideas on the 
History of Mankind, Part iv. p. 303. Cf. p. 194 seq.} 

JOHN VON MULLER, the historian of Switzerland, says : 
" All the enlightenment of the present day, whereof the daring spirit of 
Europe will not allow us to forecast the ultimate consequences, either to 
ourselves or to the other nations of the world, came originally from that 
HIERARCHY which, when the Roman Empire fell to pieces, sustained 
and directed the human race. It imparted, so to speak, to the mind of 
Northern Europe, which as yet possessed neither elevation nor grasp of 
thought, a stirring, an energising, and a life-giving impulse, under the im- 
pact of which it was carried forward, retarded indeed by many ad- 
verse, and accelerated by some favourable circumstances, till it finally 
achieved the triumphs that are now before the world " (Hist, of Switzer- 
land, Book iii. ch. i.). 

The Rev. E. CUTTS, D.D., in a work published by the Society for Pro- 
moting Christian Knowledge, says : 

" In the Middle Ages the Church was a great popular institution. . . . 
One reason, no doubt, of the popularity of the Mediaeval Church was that 
it had always been the champion of the people and the friend of the poor. 
In politics the Church was always on the side of the liberties of the people 
against the tyranny of the feudal lords. In the eye of the nobles the 
labouring population were beings of an inferior caste ; in the eye of the 
law they were chattels ; in the eye of the Church they were brethren in 
Christ, souls to be won and trained and fitted for heaven. In social life 
the Church was an easy landlord and a kind master. . . . On the whole, 
with many drawbacks, the Mediaeval Church did its duty according to 
its own light to the people. It was the great cultivator of learning and 
art, and it did its best to educate the people. It had vast political influ- 
ence, and used it on the side of the liberties of the people. . . By means 
of its painting and sculpture in the churches, its mystery plays, its reli- 
gious festivals, its catechising and its preaching, it is probable that the 
chief facts of the Gospel history and the doctrines of the Creeds were 
more universally known and more vividly realised than among the masses 
of our present population " (Turning-Points of English Church History, 
1874, pp. 161-165). 

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, the historian, says : 

"Never in all their history, in ancient times or modern, never that 
we know of, have mankind thrown out of themselves anything so 
grand, so useful, so beautiful as the CATHOLIC CHURCH once was. In 
these times of ours, well-regulated selfishness is the recognised rule of 
action every one of us is expected to look out for first himself, and take 
care of his own interests. At the time I speak of, the Church ruled 
the State with the authority of a conscience ; and self-interest, as 
a motive of action, 'was only named to be abhorred. The Bishops 



( 46 ) 

and clergy were regarded freely and simply as the immediate minis- 
ters of the Almighty ; and they seem to me to have really deserved 
that high estimate of their character. It was not for the doctrines which 
they taught, only or chiefly, that they were held in honour. Brave men 
do not fall down before their fellow-mortals for the words which they 
speak, or for the rites which they perform. Wisdom, justice, self-denial, 
nobleness, purity, high-mindedness these are the qualities before which 
the free-born races of Europe have been contented to bow ; and in 
no order of men were such qualities to be found as they were found six 
hundred years ago in the clergy of the Catholic Church. They called 
themselves the Successors of the Apostles. They claimed, in their 
Master's name, universal spiritual authority, but they made good their 
pretensions by the holiness of their own lives. They were allowed to rule 
because they deserved to rule, and in the fulness of reverence kings and 
nobles bent before a power which was nearer to God than their own. 
Over prince and subject, chieftain and serf, a body of unarmed defence- 
less men reigned supreme by the magic of sanctity. They tamed the 
fiery Northern warriors, who had broken in pieces the Roman Empire. 
They taught them they brought them really and truly to believe that 
they had immortal souls, and that they would one day stand at the awful 
judgment-bar and give account for their lives there. With the brave, the 
honest, and the good, with those who had not oppressed the poor nor 
removed their neighbour's landmark, with those who had been just in all 
their dealings, with those who had fought against evil, and had tried 
valiantly to do their Master's will, at that great day it would be well. 
For cowards, for profligates, for those who lived for luxury and pleasure 
and self-indulgence, there was the blackness of eternal death. 

" An awful conviction of this tremendous kind the clergy had effectually 
instilled into the mind of Europe. It was not a PERHAPS ; it was a cer- 
tainty. It was not a form of words repeated once a week at church ; it 
was an assurance entertained on all days and in all places, without any 
particle of doubt. And the effect of such a belief on life and conscience 
was simply immeasurable. 

" I do not pretend that the clergy were perfect. They were very far 
from perfect at the best of times, and the European nations were never 
completely submissive to them. . . . They could not prevent kings from 
quarrelling with each other. They could not hinder disputed successions, 
and civil feuds, and wars, and political conspiracies. What they did was 
to shelter the weak from the strong. In the eyes of the clergy the serf 
and his lord stood on the common level of sinful humanity. Into their 
ranks high birth was no passport. They were themselves, for the most 
part, children of the people ; and the son of the artisan or peasant rose to 
the mitre or the triple crown, just as nowadays the railsplitter and the 
tailor become Presidents of the Republic of the West. The Church was 
essentially democratic while at the same time it had the monopoly of 
learning ; and all the secular power fell to it which learning, combined 
with sanctity and assisted by superstition, can bestow. . . . 



( 47 ) 

" You have only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned cathedral 
city, and you will see in a moment the mediaeval relations between Church 
and State. The cathedral is the city. The first object you catch sight 
of as you approach is the spire tapering into the sky, or the huge towers 
holding possession of the centre of the landscape majestically beautiful 
imposing by mere size amidst the large forms of Nature herself. As 
you go nearer, the vastness of the building impresses you more and more. 
The puny dwelling-places of the citizens creep at its feet, the pinnacles 
are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when down below among the 
streets and lanes the twilight is darkening. And even now, when the 
towns are thrice their ancient size, and the houses have stretched upwards 
from two stories to five ; when the great chimneys are vomiting their 
smoke among the clouds, and the temples of modern industry the work- 
shops and the factories spread their long fronts before the eye, the 
cathedral is still the governing form in the picture the one object which 
possesses the imagination and refuses to be eclipsed. As that cathedral 
was to the old town, so was the Church of the Middle Ages to the secular 
institutions of the world. Its very neighbourhood was sacred ; and its 
shadow, like the shadow of the Apostles, was a sanctuary " (FROUDE's 
Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. i. 2d ed., 1867, pp. 33-37). 

Speaking of one of the great Religious Orders of the Church, that of 
ST. BENEDICT, a writer in the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE says: 

" It is a remarkable fact in. the history of Christianity, that in its earliest 
stage the first phase of its existence its tendency was to elevate pea- 
sants to the dignity of Apostles ; but in its second stage it reversed its 
operations, and brought kings from their thrones to the seclusion of the 
cloister humbled the great ones of the earth to the dust of penitential 
humility. Up to the fourth century, Christianity was a terrible struggle 
against principalities and powers : then a time came when principalities 
and powers humbled themselves at the foot of that Cross whose followers 
they had so cruelly persecuted. The innumerable martyrdoms of the first 
four centuries of its career were followed by a long succession of royal 
humiliations, 1 for during the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, 
in addition to what took place as regards other Orders, no less than ten 
emperors and twenty kings resigned their crowns and became monks of the 
Benedictine Order alone. . . . Adding to these their subsequent acquisi- 
tions, the Benedictines claim, up to the fourteenth century, the honour of 
enrolling amongst their number twenty emperors and forty-seven kings, 
twenty sons of emperors and forty-eight sons of kings. . . . As nuns of 
their Order they have had no less than ten empresses andfifty-seve?i queens. 
In the wake of these crowned heads follow more than one hundred prin- 
cesses, da2tghters of kings and emperors. . . . The Benedictines produced 
. . . seven thousand Archbishops, fifteen thousand Bishops, . . . fifteen 
thousand Abbots, four thousand Saints. They established in different 
countries altogether thirty-seven thousand monasteries, which sent out 
1 The reader will remember the prophecy in Isai. xlix. 23, &c. 



( 48 ) 

into the world upwards of fifteen thousand seven hundred monks, all of 
whom attained distinction as authors of books or scientific inventors," &c. 
(Dub. Univ. Mag., Jan. 1866). 

"Western Monasticism, in its general character," says Dean MILMAX, 
" was not the barren, idly laborious, or dreamy quietude of the East. It 
was industrious and productive ; it settled colonies, preserved arts and 
letters, built splendid edifices, 1 fertilised deserts. If it rent from the world 
the most powerful minds, having trained them by its stern discipline, it 
sent them back to rule the world. It continually, as it were, renewed its 
youth, and kept up a constant infusion of vigorous life, now quickening 
into enthusiasm, now darkening into fanaticism ; and, by its perpetual 
rivalry, stimulating the zeal or supplying the deficiencies of the secular 
clergy. In successive ages it adapted itself to the state of the human 
mind. At first a missionary to barbarous nations, it built abbeys, hewed 
down forests, cultivated swamps, enclosed domains, retrieved or won for 
civilisation tracts which had fallen to waste or had never known culture. 
With St. Dominic it turned its missionary zeal upon Christianity itself, 
and spread as a preaching Order throughout Christendom ; with St. 
Francis it became even more popular, and lowered itself to the very 
humblest of mankind" (Hist, of Lat. Christ., vol. i., Introduct., pp. 7, 8). 2 

D'lSRAELl (the elder) writes: 

1 " Latin Christianity," says the same writer, " during a period of from ten to 
twelve centuries, had covered the whole of Western Europe with its still multiply- 
ing churches and religious buildings. From the southern shores of Sicily to the 
Hebrides and the Scandinavian kingdoms, from the doubtful borders of Christian 
Spain to Hungary, Poland, Prussia, not a city was without its cathedral, sur- 
rounded by its succursal churches, its monasteries, and convents, each with its 
separate church or chapel. There was not a town but above the lowly houses, 
almost entirely of wood, rose the churches, of stone or some other solid material, 
in their superior dignity, strength, dimensions, and height ; not a village was 
without its sacred edifice ; no wayside without its humbler chapel or oratory. 
Not a river but in its course reflected the towers and pinnacles of many abbeys ; 
not a forest but above its lofty oaks or piner appeared the long-ridged roof or the 
countless turrets of the conventual church and buildings. Even now, after periods 
in some countries of rude religious fanaticism, . . . after the total suppression or 
great reduction of monastic institutions, the secularisation of their wealth, and the 
abandonment of their buildings to decay and ruin ; our awe and wonder are still 
commanded, and seem as if they would be commanded for centuries, by the un- 
shaken solidity, spaciousness, height, majesty, and noble harmony of the cathedrals 
and churches throughout Western Europe. We are amazed at the imagination 
displayed in every design, at the enormous human power displayed in their crea- 
tion ; at the wealth which commanded, the consummate science which guided that 
power ; at the profound religious zeal which devoted that power, wealth, and 
science to these high purposes. ... It is impossible to follow out to their utmost 
extent, or to appreciate too highly the ennobling, liberalising, humanising, Chris- 
tianising effects of Church architecture during the Middle Ages " (Book xiv. 
ch. viii. pp. 268, 289, vol. ix.). 

2 The reader should consult MONTALEMBERT'S splendid work The Monks of 
the West, Eng. trans., 7 vols. 8vo. Comp. the Protestant NEANDER'S Hist, of 
the Church, vol. vii., Bonn's ed., pp. 322 seq. t 352 seq. t 372 seq. t 387, 388, 398, 
399, 406, 407. 



( 49 ) 

" It is certainly to the solitary monks that we owe the preservation of 
the precious remains of ancient literature. We must consider their silent 
mansions as having afforded the only retreats to science and literature in 
ages when a universal ignorance threatened to banish from Europe every 
species of learning. The labour of transcribing books, which then formed 
one of the chief occupations of the monks, always continued with them, 
till the discovery of the admirable art of printing. It is thus that all 
impartial historians dispense only bare justice to the ancient monks, by 
acknowledging that it is to their cares and to their labours that we owe 
the valuable remains of antiquity, as well sacred as profane" (Curiosities 
of Literature, 1st series, vol. ii. p. 345 seg.). 

Dr. FARRAR, Canon of Westminster, and Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the 
Queen, says : 

" What was it that had preserved the best elements of Christianity in 
the fourth century? The self-sacrifice of the HERMITS. What was it 
which saved the principles of law, and order, and civilisation ? What 
rescued the wreck of ancient literature from the universal conflagration ? 
What restrained, what converted the inrushing Teutonic races ? What 
kept alive the dying embers of science ? What fanned into a flame the 
white ashes of art ? What reclaimed waste lands, cleared forests, drained 
fens, protected miserable populations, encouraged free labour, equalised 
widely separated ranks ? What was the sole witness for the cause of 
charity, the sole preservative of even partial education, the sole rampart 
against intolerable oppression ? What force was left which could alone 
humble the haughty by the courage which is inspired by superiority to 
those things which most men desire, and elevate the poor by the spectacle 
of a poverty at once voluntary and powerful ? What weak and unarmed 
power alone retained the strength and the determination to dash down 
the mailed hand of the baron when it was uplifted against his serf, to 
proclaim a truce of God between warring violences, and to make insolen 
wickedness tremble by asserting the inherent supremacy of goodness over 
transgression, of knowledge over ignorance, of quiet righteousness over 
brute force ? You will say the Church ; you will say Christianity. Yes, 
but for many a long century the. very bulwarks and ramparts of the 
Church were the monasteries, and the one invincible force of the Church 
lay in the self-sacrifice, the holiness, the courage of the MONKS " (Saintly 
Workers, pp. 82, 83, ed. 1878). 

" From the fifth to the thirteenth century,'"' says the same writer, " the 
Church was engaged in elaborating the most splendid organisation which 
the world has ever seen. Starting with the separation of the spiritual 
from the temporal power, and the mutual independence of each in its own 
sphere, Catholicism worked hand in hand with feudalism for the amelio- 
ration of mankind. Under the influence of feudalism slavery became 
serfdom, and aggressive was modified into defensive war. 1 Under the 

1 M. GUIZOT says : "There can be no doubt that the Church struggled reso- 
lutely against the great vices of the -social state, against slavery, for instance ; 

D 



( 50 ) 

influence of Catholicism the monasteries preserved learning and main- 
tained the sense of the unity of Christendom. Under the combined influ- 
ence of both grew up the lovely ideal of chivalry, moulding generous 
instincts into gallant institutions, making the body vigorous and the soul 
pure, and wedding the Christian virtues of humility and tenderness to the 
natural graces of courtesy and strength. During this period the Church 
was the one mighty 'witness for light in an age of darkness, for order in 
an age of lawlessness, for personal holiness in an epoch of licentious rage. 
Amid the despotism of kings and the turbulence of aristocracies, it was 
an inestimable blessing that there should be a power which, by the un- 
armed majesty of simple goodness, made the haughtiest and the boldest 
respect the interests of justice, and tremble at the thought of temperance, 
righteousness, and the judgment to come" (Farrar's Huhean Lectures 
for 1870, p. 115, Lect. iii., The Victories of Christianity). 

" Once more, consider what the Church did for Education. Her ten 
thousand monasteries kept alive and transmitted that torch of learning 
which otherwise would have been extinguished long before. A religious 
education, incomparably superior to the mere athleticism of the noble's 
hall, was extended to the meanest serf who wished for it. This fact alone, 
by proclaiming the dignity of the Individual, elevated the entire hopes and 
destinies of the race. The humanising machinery of Schools and Uni- 
versities, the civilising propaganda of missionary zeal, were they not due 
to her ? And, more than this, her very existence was a living education ; 
it showed that the successive ages were not sporadic and accidental 
scenes, but were continuous and coherent acts in the one great drama. 
In Christendom the yearnings of the past were fulfilled, the direction of 
the future determined. In dim but magnificent procession, 'the giant 
forms of empires on their way to ruin' had each ceded to her their 
sceptres, bequeathed to her their gifts. . . . Life became one broad rejoic- 
ing river, whose tributaries, once severed, were now united, and whose 
majestic stream, without one break in its continuity, flowed on, under the 
common sunlight, from its Source beneath the Throne of God " (Ib. p. 
1 86, Lect. v., Christianity and the Race). 

Mr. LECKY observes that : 

" The Catholic Church was the very heart of Christendom, and the 
spirit that radiated from her penetrated into all the relations of life, and 
coloured the institutions it did not create. ... A certain unity of type 
was then manifested, which has never been restored. . . . This ascendancy 
was gained by mediaeval Catholicity more completely than by any other 

. . . Lastly, she strove by all sorts of means to restrain violence and continued 
warfare in society. Every one knows what was the Truce of God, and numerous 
measures of a similar kind, by which the Church struggled against the employ- 
ment of force, and strove to introduce more order and gentleness into society. 
These facts are so well known that it is needless for me'to enter into details " (Hist, 
of Civilisat., Lect. vi.). Comp. BALMEZ, Etiropean Civilisat,, Eng. trans., p. 66 
et seq. 



system before or since, and the stage of civilisation that resulted from it 
was one of the most important in the evolutions of society. By con- 
solidating the heterogeneous and anarchical elements that succeeded the 
downfall of the Roman Empire, by infusing into Christendom the concep- 
tion of a bond of unity that is superior to the divisions of nationhood, and 
of a moral tie that is superior to force, by softening slavery into serfdom 
and preparing the way for the ultimate emancipation of labour, Catholicism 
laid the very foundations of modern civilisation. Herself the most 
admirable of all organisations, there were formed beneath her influence a 
vast network of organisations, political, municipal, and social, which 
supplied a large proportion of the materials of almost every modern 
structure. ... In the transition from slavery to serfdom, and in the 
transition from serfdom to liberty, she was the most zealous, the most 
unwearied, and the most efficient agent " (Hist, of Rationalism, vol. ii. 
PP- 36, 37, 209). 

Dr. MAITLAND declares that : 

u At the darkest periods the Christian Church was the source and 
spring of civilisation, the dispenser of what little comfort and security 
there was in the things of this world, and the quiet scriptural asserter of 
the rights of man " (Essays on the Dark Ages, p. 393). 

Regarding the charges of ignorance and corruption of morals, alleged 
against the mediaeval clergy and monks, he says : 

" There were in the dark ages (as well as at other times) two sets of 
persons, from whose writings it is easy to cull passages describing 'the 
clergy ' as less learned and religious than they were bound to be ; and 
each set tempted to detail, and perhaps to exaggerate, the vices of 
ecclesiastics. First, there were those who hated the religion which the 
clergy maintained, and who envied the property, privileges, and influence 
which they enjoyed, 1 and which (whatever the personal character of 
some of them might be) they generally employed to check the licentious- 
ness of others. Among these there have perhaps always been facetious 
persons who have considered religion and its ministers as fit subjects for 
their drollery, and who have delighted to represent the clergy as a vile 
race of knaves and fools, characterised only by pride, sensuality, avarice, 
and ambition, except where all these, and all that was better, was kept 
under by idiot superstition. . . . The second set of writers to whom I have 
alluded are those who, either under pretence, or with the real object, of 
producing reformation, have been vigilant to spy out, and forward to 
publish, the vices of Churchmen. 2 . . . From both these sets of writers 

1 The untenability or utter falsity of most of the charges made against the 
Religious Houses of this country in the reign of Henry VIII. has been recently 
more fully exposed by Dr. DIXON, Protestant Canon of Carlisle, in vol. i. of his 
Hist, of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction. 
In this work many of Mr. FROUDE'S statements are refuted. 

2 The Spanish historian BALMEZ, after admitting " that lamentable abuses had 
crept in during the course of the Middle Ages, that the corruption of morals had 



( 52 ) 

very strong statements may be extracted, and the testimony which they 
apparently give will seem, to the young student of ecclesiastical history, 
to be confirmed by the proceedings of Councils and the tenor of their 
canons, as well as by a good deal of what he will find in the works of 
secular historians, even supposing that he does go to the original sources. 
He must, however, remember that sin, in some shape or other, is the 
great staple of history and the sole object of law ; and he must expect, 
from both the historian and the legislator, to hear more of one turbulent 
prelate, or one set of factious or licentious monks, than of a hundred 
societies or a thousand scattered clergy living in the quiet decency suited 
to their profession " (Ib. p. 33). 

Mr. EDMUND FFOULKES, writes : 

" As little can it be denied that the glories of the thirteenth century 
were due to the vigorous reforms inaugurated by St. Gregory VII. and his 
successors, as that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a very 
extensive declension of manners and discipline, though by no means of 
civilisation. Even on the former head, were I writing a Church history, 
there would be some extenuating circumstances to be produced in behalf 
of a period during which upwards of fifty Universities 1 were founded in 

been great, and that consequent reform was required ; " and after showing that 
these abuses were to be attributed to " the evils of the time alone," continues : 
" But were the spirit and ardent desire of reforming abuses ever wanting in the 
Church ? It can be shown that they were not. I will not mention the Saints 
whom she did not cease to produce during these unhappy periods ; history proves 
their number and their virtues, which, so vividly contrasting with the corruption 
of the age, show that the divine flames which descended on the Apostles had not 
been extinguished in the bosom of the Catholic Church. This fact proves much ; 
but there is another still more remarkable a fact less subject to dispute, and 
which we cannot be accused of 'exaggerating a fact which is not limited to 
individuals, but which is, on the contrary, the most complete expression of the 
spirit by which the whole body of the Church was animated ; I mean, the constant 
meeting of Councils, in which abuses were reproved and condemned, and in which 
sanctity of morals and the observance of discipline were continually inculcated. 
Happily this consoling fact is indisputable ; it is open to every eye ; and to be 
aware of it one only needs consult a volume of ecclesiastical history on the pro- 
ceedings of Councils. . . . Simony and incontinence were the prevailing vices : 
if you open the canons of Councils, you will find them everywhere anathema- 
tised. ..." (See BALMEZ on European Civilisation, Protestantism and Catho- 
licity Compared, 3d Eng. edit., p. 8 seq. and p. 400). 

1 The German historian ALZOG says that "sixty-six Universities, of which 
sixteen belonged to Germany, existed in Europe before the year 1517 " (Universal 
Church Hist., Eng. trans., ed. Gill, Dublin, 1880, vol. iii. p. 179). The principal 
of these were the Universities of Paris, Bologna, and Salerno (see the Prot. 
Church historian MOSHEIM, Maclaine's edit., vol. iii. p. 28 et seq.}. A complete 
list of them, with the dates of their foundation, is given by ALZOG (vol. ii. p. 523 
note}. The number in Italy was sixteen ; in France, thirteen; in Portugal and 



( 53 ) 

all parts of Europe ; gorgeous Cathedrals of the stamp of Orvieto, Sienna, 
Milan, Strasbunr, Winchester (as restored by William of Wykeham), 
Toledo, and Seville erected ; professorial chairs for the study of Hebrew 
and Chaldee, Greek and Arabic, ordained by a General Council for Rome, 
Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. No less than twenty printed 
editions of the Bible were brought out in High or Low Germany alone 1 
between A.D. 1460 and the age of Luther ; upwards of 1200 books issued 
from the printing presses of Italy alone between A.D. 1471-80.2 For 
commentators on the Bible, it could boast of Tostatus and Nicholas of 
Lyra ; for masters of the inner life, John Tauler and Thomas a Kempis ; 
for ideal artists, Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolomeo. It was not behind- 
hand in men and women of the saintly graces of St. Catherine of Sienna, 
St. Bridget, St. Elizabeth of Portugal, St. Vincent Ferrier, and St. John 
Cantius ; of the ardent philanthropy of Bartholomew de las Casas ; of 
the splendid abilities of Cardinal Ximenes, or the splendid munificence of 
William of Wykeham and Wainflete " (Christendom's Divisions, vol. i. 
p. 130). 

Regarding the Council of Trent, HALLAM says : 

" It is usual for Protestant writers to inveigh against the Tridentine 
Fathers. I do not assent to their decisions, which is not to the pur- 
pose ; . . . but I must presume to say, that reading their proceedings in 
the pages of that very able and not very lenient historian to whom we 
have generally recourse, an adversary as decided as any that could have 
come from the Reformed Churches, 3 I find proofs of much ability, con- 
sidering the embarrassments with which they had to struggle, and of an 
honest desire of reformation among a large body as to those matters which 
in their judgment ought to be reformed" (Hist, of Literal, of Europe, 
part i. ch. vi. sect. 25 note ; vol. i. p. 376, ed. 1860). And again : " No 
General Council ever contained so many persons of eminent learning and 
ability as that of Trent ; nor is there ground for believing that any other 
ever investigated the questions before it with so much patience, acuteness. 

Spain, eleven; in England, two; in Scotland, three; in Burgundy, one; in 
Brabant, one ; in Germany, sixteen ; in Bohemia, one ; in Poland, one ; in Den- 
mark, one ; in Sweden, one ; in Hungary, three ; in Ireland, one. 

1 See ALZOG, vol. iii. p. 142 (he is speaking of Bibles in the German lan- 
guage). 

2 HALLAM says : " The books printed in Italy during these ten years amount, 
according to Panzer, to 1297, of which 234 are editions of ancient classical authors. 
Books without date are of course not included ; and the list must not be reckoned 
complete as to others" (Hist, of Literature of Europe, part i. ch. iii. n. 44). 

3 Of Paul Sarpi's Hist, of the Council of Trent HALLAM elsewhere says : 
" It became the text-book of Protestantism on the subject. . . . It appears to me 
quite out of doubt . . . that he was entirely hostile to the Church, in the usual 
sense, as well as to the Court of Rome, sympathising in affection and concurring 
generally in opinion ivith the Reformed denomination " (Hist, of Liter at., part iii. ch. 
ii. sect. 3 ; vol. ii. p. 398). Sarpi's errors and misrepresentations were exposed 
by Cardinal PALLAVICINO in his authentic History of the Council of Trent. 



( 54 ) 

temper, and desire of truth" (Ib. part ii. ch. ii. sect. 18 note; vol. ii. p. 
71 note}. Regarding the labours of the Popes and of the Catholic Church 
at this period for the reformation of morals, c., see also RANKE'S Hist, 
of the Popes, Bohn's edit., vol. i. pp. no, 214, 233, 249, 264, 265, c. 
Comp. vol. ii. pp. 160, 179, 182 seq. 

"Ancient Christianity" 

Dr. ISAAC TAYLOR, a well-known Protestant writer, says : 
"No reader of Church history can require it to be proved that the 
various rites and usages on account of which the Romish and Greek 
Churches are usually impugned as idolatrous by Protestants, were openly 
practised and were authorised by the heads of the Church in the age of 
Gregory I. But when did these superstitions first make their appearance ? 
It is superfluous to produce evidence of their existence and prevalence in 
the times immediately preceding those of Pope Gregory. Gregory of 
Tours, Leo I., Evagrius, Sozomen, Socrates, Theodoret, Isidore, Cyril of 
Alexandria, and many others, forbid the supposition that they, or any of 
their contemporaries, had been the authors of the opinions or the usages 
now in question. The men of that period did indeed give their supersti- 
tions a more distinct expression, and in various instances they amplified 
particular rites ; yet only as a man clears, and plants, and beautifies an 
inheritance on which his ancestors had toiled in like manner " {Ancient 
Christianity, vol. ii. p. 173, 1842). 

In p. 92 he speaks of " i. Chrysostom's personal and cordial approval 
of demonolatrous [Saint and Martyr] worship. 2. The UNIVERSALITY 
of these superstitions, or the fact that the Christianised people of the 
fourth century practised, in these respects, whatever is now characteristic 
of the Greek and Romish communions. 3. These practices were not then 
of recent origin? 1 

After filling about forty pages of his work with citations from Basil, 
Ephraem Syrus, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Asterius, and others, 
he says : 

"Not a fiftieth part of what might deserve to be called the evidence 
bearing upon our subject has been produced. Scarcely a writer, if there 
be one, of the Nicene Church Eastern or Western woicld withhold his 
contributions to the mass ; and alas ! what a volume would Aitgustine 
alone furnish ! . . . The few passages that have been cited will, I think, 
be enough to satisfy every honest and intelligent reader as to the broad 
fact assumed viz., that the direct invocation of Saints and Martyrs, and 
an idolatrous veneration of their symbols and relics, were carried to as 
cidpable an extreme in the Nicene Church as they have at any time since 
been carried in the Romish Church ; and that in whatever terms we may 
choose to express our disapprobation of those superstitions as practised 

1 Dr. LITTLEDALE has the assurance to affirm that "we find the first germs 
of the practice (of the Invocation of Saints) at the dose of the fourth century ;" 
and he refers to St. Chrysostom as being opposed to the same ! (Plain Reasons y 
&c., 3d edit., p. 34). 



( 55 ) 

by the latter, they cannot, with any colour of reason, be retracted when 
we have to speak of the same as attaching to the former " (Ib. pp. 213, 214)- 
With respect to St. Ambrose, he says : "A Romanist might proceed to 
argue : Most distinctly does he recognise and authenticate Prayers for 
the dead Prayers to the dead the merit of Penance the Supremacy of 
the Bishop of Rome and that opinion of the miraculous property of the 
Eucharistic elements which Protestants deny. Is it equitable, then, in 
argument, to quote this Father against Romanists, when in truth his testi- 
mony, taken as a whole, bears most decisively against Protestantism ? 
Such a reply can by no means be rebutted 1 ' 1 (Supplement, p. 19). " In 
almost every instance in which Protestants and Romanists are at issue, 
Ambrose may properly be appealed to by the latter, and not the former" 
(Id. p. 37). " Augustine allows and recommends all that the Church of 
Rome formally sanctions ; or, at the least, he authorises that which all 
Protestants utterly condemn" (Ib. p. 25). 

The Bible in the Church. 

The Rev. E. CUTTS, D.D., in a work published by the Society for 
Promoting Christian Knowledge, says : 

" There is a good deal of popular misapprehension about the way in 
which the Bible was regarded in the Middle Ages. Some people think 
that it was very little read, even by the clergy ; whereas the fact is that 
the sermons of the mediaeval preachers are more full of Scripture quota- 
tions and allusions than any sermons in these days ; and the writers on 
other subjects are so full of Scriptural allusion, that it is evident their 
minds were saturated with Scriptural diction. . . . Another common error 
is, that the clergy were unwilling that the laity should read the Bible for 
themselves, and carefully kept it in an unknown tongue, that the people 
might not be able to read it. The truth is, that most people who could 
read at all could read Latin, and would certainly prefer to read the 
authorised Vulgate to any vernacular version. But it is also true that 
translations into the vernacular were made. . . . We have the authority 
of Sir Thomas More for saying that 'the whole Bible was, long before 
Wycliffe's days, by virtuous and well-learned men, translated into the 
English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and sober- 
ness well and reverently read.' . . . Again, on another occasion, he says : 
' The clergy keep no Bibles from the laity but such translations as be 
either not yet approved for good, or such as be already reproved for 
naught (bad), as Wycliffe's was. For as for old ones that were before 
Wycliffe's days, they remain lawful, and be in some folk's hands ' " (Turn- 
ing-Points of English Church History ', 1874, pp. 200, 201). 

The QUARTERLY REVIEW (October 1879) sa >' 5 : ~ 

" The notion that people in the Middle Ages did not read their Bibles 
is probably exploded, except among the more ignorant of controversialists. 
But a glance at this volume (Dean Goulburn's Life of Bishop Herbert de 
Losingd) is enough to show that the notion is not simply a mistake that 



( 56 ) 

// is one of the most ludicrous and grotesque of blunders. If having the 
Bible at their finger? ends cottld have saved the Middle Age teachers from 
abuses and false doctrine, they were certainly well equipped* They were 
not merely accomplished textuaries. They had their minds as saturated 
with the language and associations of the sacred text as the Puritans of 
the seventeenth century." (See also MAITLAND'S Dark Ages, pp. 220, 221, 
470.) 

Early Printed Catholic Versions of the Bible. 

I. LATIN BIBLES. The Protestant essayist on " THE DARK AGES," 
when refuting D'Aubigne^s absurd statement that the Bible was " a rare 
book, unknown in those days" when Luther " discovered " a copy of a 
Latin Bible in the monastery at Erfurt, says : u To say nothing of parts 
of the Bible, or of books whose place is uncertain, we know of, at least, 
twenty different editions of the whole Latin Bible, printed in Germany 
only before Luther was born" In addition to these : " Before Luther 
was born the Bible had been printed in Rome, Naples, Florence, and 
Placenza, and Venice alone had furnished eleven editions." " No doubt," 
he adds, " we should be within the truth if we were to say that beside the 
multitude of manuscript copies, not yet fallen into disuse, the press had 
issued fifty different editions of the whole Latin Bible, to say nothing of 
Psalters, New Testaments, and other parts " (MAITLAND'S Essays on the 
Dark Ages, p. 469). 

This estimate is, however, very far within the truth. REUSS, a leading 
Rationalist of Germany, says that "no book was so frequently published 
immediately after the first invention of printing as the Latin Bible, more 
than one hundred editions of it being struck off before the year 1520" 
(Ed. Reuss, Die Geschichte der heiligen schriften,N. T., Brunswick, 1853, 
p. 458). HAIN, in his Repertorium Bibliographicuvi, printed at Tubingen, 
reckons consecutively ninety-eight distinct editions before the year 1500, 
independently of twelve other editions, which, together with the Latin 
text, presented the Glossa Ordinaria, or the Postillas of Lyranus. From 
the year 1475, when the first Venetian edition appeared, to the close of 
the century, that city yielded no fewer than twenty-two complete editions 
of the Latin Bible, besides some others with the notes of Lyranus. (See 
Irish Ecclesiast. Record, vol. i. p. 255.) 

II. GERMAN BIBLES. 1 The first German printed Bible, bearing the 
arms of Frederick III., issued from the Mentz press about 1462. Another 
version appeared in 1466, two copies of which are still preserved in the 

1 The CHURCH TIMES of July 26, 1878, speaking of the List cf Bibles in the 
Caxton Exhibition (South Kensington, 1877), published by H. Stevens, says : 
" This catalogue will be very useful for one thing, at any rate, as disproving the 
popular lie about Luther's finding the Bible for the first time at Erfurt about 
1507. Not only are there very many editions of the Latin Vulgate long ante- 
rior to that time, but there were actually nine GERMAN editions of the Bible in the 
Caxton Exhibition earlier than 1483, the year of Luther s birth, and at least three 
more before the end of the century." 



( 57 ) 

Senatorial Library at Leipsic. Other versions were published in rapid 



III. ITALIAN BIBLES. Three editions of the Bible in the Italian 
tongue appeared in the year 1471, one being a translation by Nicholas 
Malermi, a Camaldolese monk, and the two others by writers of the 
fourteenth century. No fewer than eleven complete editions of these 
several versions appeared before the year 1500, and were reprinted eight 
times more before the year 1567, with the express permission of the " Holy 
Office" More than forty editions are reckoned before the appearance of 
tne first Protestant version in Italian. An entirely new translation was 
made by Sanctes Marmoschini in 1538, and was reprinted in 1546. 
Another by Bruccioli of Venice in 1532, from which date to 1552, twelve 
editions of this version appeared ; but though remarkable for its Tuscan 
dialect, it was'inaccurate in many passages, and for this reason was con- 
demned by the ecclesiastical authorities. The first Protestant Italian 
Bible was printed at Geneva in 1562, and was little more than a reprint 
of Bruccioli's version. 

IV. SPANISH BIBLES. In Spain the whole Bible, which had been 
translated into the vernacular tongue by Boniface Ferrier in 1405, was 
printed in 1478, and reprinted in 1515, with the formal consent of the 
Spanish Inquisition. In 1512, the Gospels and Epistles were translated 
by Ambrosio Montesma, and this work was republished at Antwerp in 
1544; at Barcelona in 1601 and 1608 ; and at Madrid in 1603 and 1615. 
CARRANZA, the celebrated Archbishop of Toledo, says in the Prologue 
to his Commentaries : " Before the heresies of Luther appeared, I do 
not know that the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue were anywhere 
forbidden. In Spain, the Bible was translated into it by order of the 
Catholic sovereigns, at the time when the Moors and Jews were allowed 
to live among the Christians according to their own law." He then pro- 
ceeds to show why the indiscriminate circulation of the same (from which 
so much evil naturally resulted) was subsequently prohibited in Spain. 
(See BALMEZ On European Civilisat., ch. xxxvi., Eng. trans., p. 192.) 

V. FRENCH BIBLES. A French translation of the New Testament, by 
two Augustinian friars, Julian Macho and Pierre Farget, was published at 
Lyons in 1478. A copy of this version is preserved in the public library 
of Leipsic. The version of De Moulins appeared soon afterwards in a 

1 They appeared as follows : At Mayence in 1467 ; Nuremburg, 1477, 1483, 
1490, 1518; Augsburg, 1477, 1480, 1483, 1487, 1490, 1494, I57, 1518, 1524; 
Strasburg, 1485. Fust's edition was printed in 1472. Seckendorf speaks of 
three other distinct versions of the German Bible, printed at Wittemberg in 1470, 
1483, and 1490 (Comment, in Lutheran., lib. i. sect. 51). Versions in other 
<iialects appeared at Lubeck in 1494, at Halberstadt in 1522, at Cologne 
between 1470 and 1480, at Delft in 1477, at Gouda in 14/9, at Louvain in 
1518. (See PANZER'S List of all the Bibles Printed in Old German. Nuremburg, 
1774, and the New History of Catholic German Bibles, Nuremburg, 1784.) 



( 53 ) 

quarto edition, and a new edition, carefully revised by Jean de Rely, was 
published in Paris under the auspices of Charles VIII. in 1487. It passed 
through fourteen other editions in Paris and Lyons alone, before the year 
1546. Menaud's version was published in 1484, and that of James le 
Fevre in 1512. This last, corrected by the Louvain divines, became so 
popular that it passed through more than forty editions before the year 
1700. Another French Catholic translation, by Nicholas de Leuse, was 
printed at Antwerp in 1534. The first Protestant version was printed at 
Neufchatel in 1535. 

VI. OTHER VERSIONS. Amongst these may be mentioned particularly 
the FLEMISH translation made by Jacobus Merland, cir. A.D. 1210, which 
was printed at Cologne in 1475, and passed through seven editions before 
the year 1530, and of which the Antwerp edition was republished eight 
times in the space of seventeen years ; the Flemish translation of the 
New Testament by Cornelius Kendrick, 1524, of which ten editions were 
published at Antwerp alone within thirty years ; a BOHEMIAN version 
published at Prague in 1488, at Cutra in 1498, and at Venice in 1506 
and 1511 ; a SCLAVONIAN at Cracow; and an ETHIOPIC Bible at Rome 
in 1548, &c. 

Complete lists of the various Catholic translations of the Bible will be 
found in LE LONG'S Bibliotheca Sacra, 2 vols. fol., Paris, 1723 ; and in 
the Bibliotheque Curieuse of the Calvinist writer, DAVID CLEMENT, 9 
vols. 4to, Gottingen, 1750. See also the first seven vols. of Panzer's 
Annalcs Typographic* (Nuremburg, 1791-1803), the Dublin Review, 
vol. i., and the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, vol. i. 

Of the celebrated " COMPLUTENSIAN POLYGLOT" of Cardinal Ximenes 
(published in 6 vols. fol., 1515), and of the early Catholic editions of the 
HEBREW and GREEK Scriptures, it is unnecessary here to speak. 



The English and Foreign "Reformation" Its early Effects on Chris- 
tian Faith and Morals, as described by the Reformers themselves 
and by later Protestant Historians, 

I. ITS EFFECTS ON CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 

CALVIN, writing to Melanchthon, says : " It is of great importance 
that the divisions which subsist amongst us should not be known to 
future ages ; for nothing can be more ridiculous than that we, who have 
been obliged to separate from the whole world (a toto mundo disces- 
sionem facere coacti sumus), should have agreed so ill among ourselves 
from the very beginning of the Reformation" (Epist. 141). 

BEZA writes to Dudith : " I have also been long and greatly tormented 
by the same thoughts which you describe to me. I see our people wander 
at the mercy of every wind of doctrine, and after having been raised up, 
fall, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. What they 



( 59 ) 

think of religion to-day you may know ; what they will think of it to- 
morrow you cannot affirm. On what point of religion are the Churches 
which have declared war against the Pope agreed amongst themselves ? 
Examine all, from beginning to the end; you will hardly find one thing 
affirmed by the one which the other does not directly cry out against as 
impiety " (In quo tandem religionis capite congruunt inter se ecclesia?, 
qua? Romano Pontifici bellum indixerunt ? A capite ad calcem si per- 
curras omnia, nihil propemodum reperias ab uno affirmari, quod alter 
statim non impium esse clamitet. Epist ad And. Dudit., ap. BALMEZ, 
European Civilisat., p. 402). 

MELANCHTHON declared that "the Elbe with all its waters could not 
furnish tears enough to weep over the miseries of the distracted Refor- 
mation " (Epis. 202, lib. ii.). See also BOSSUET'S Hist, of the Varia- 
tions of the Protestant Churches, bk. v. ch. iv., and bk. ii. ch. xliii. 

HALLAM says : "We ought to reckon among the principal causes of 
this change [the decline of Protestantism and the Catholic reaction in the 
latter half of the sixteenth century] those perpetual disputes, those irre- 
concilable animosities, that bigotry above all, and persecuting spirit, 
which were exhibited in the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches " (Hist, 
of Literature of Europe, part ii. ch. ii. sect. 20 ; vol. ii. ed. 1860, p. 
73). " Thus, in the second period of the Reformation, those ominous 
symptoms which had appeared in its earlier stage, disunion, virulence, 
bigotry, intolerance, far from yielding to any benignant influence, grew 
more inveterate and incurable " (Ib. sect. 29, p. 80). 

Speaking of the learned Protestant GROTIUS, he says : " The ill-usage 
he sustained at the hands of those who boasted their independence of Papal 
tyranny, the caresses of the Gallican clergy after he had fixed his residence 
in Paris, the growing dissensions and virulence of the Protestants, the 
choice that seemed alone to be left in their communion between fanatical 
anarchy, disintegrating everything like a Church, on the one hand, and 
a domination of vulgar and bigoted ecclesiastics on the other, made him 
gradually less and less averse to the COMPREHENSIVE AND MAJESTIC 
UNITY OF THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY, and more and more disposed to 
concede some point of uncertain doctrine or some form of ambiguous 
expression" (Ib. part iii. ch. ii. sect. 13 ; vol. ii. p. 409). 

For a full account of the ANGLICAN SCHISM, and of the variations in 
doctrine of the " Church as by Law Established," the reader may be 
referred to the Rev. W. WATERWORTH'S Orgin and Development of Angli- 
canism (Burns & Gates) ; and he may also advantageously consult the 
History of the Church of England, from the Abolition of the Roman 
Jurisdiction, by Dr. DixON, Protestant Canon of Carlisle. 

About the middle of the seventeenth century, Dr. WALTON, the editor 
of the celebrated Polyglot Bible, in six volumes folio, and afterwards 
Bishop of Chester, writes : "Aristarchus formerly could hardly find 



( 60 ) 

seven wise men in Greece ; but amongst us [English] are hardly to be 
found so many ignorant persons; for all are teachers, all divinely instructed. 
There is no fanatic or clown, from the lowest dregs of the people, who 
does not give you his own dreams for the word of God. For the bottomless 
pit seems to have been set open, from whence a smoke has risen which 
has obscured the heavens and the stars, and locusts are come out with 
stings, a numerous race of sectaries and heretics, who have renewed all 
the old heresies, and invented monstrous opinions of their own. These 
have filled our cities, villages, camps, houses ; nay, our churches and 
pulpits too, and lead the poor deluded people with them to the pit of 
perdition" (Pref. ad Proleg. in Bibl. Polyglotta, ed. Cambridge, 1828). 

II. ITS EFFECTS ON MORALS. 

Protestant writers can gain nothing by exaggerating, as they commonly 
do, the evils and corruption of morals that existed before the time of 
the so-called Reformation, seeing that according to the unanimous testi- 
mony of the Reformers themselves, and of all truthful historians, matters 
became much worse wherever their new gospel was spread, and amongst 
the majority of those who embraced it. 

LUTHER himself declared : " The world grows worse from day to 
day. Men are now much more covetous, malicious, and resentful, much 
more unruly, shameless, and full of vice, than they were in the time of 
Popery " (Mundus in dies fit deterior. Sunt nunc homines magis vindictas 
cupidi, magis avari, magis ab omni misericordia remoti, magis immodesti 
et indisciplinati, multoque deteriores quam fuerint in Papatu. In Postill. 
super Evang. Dominica prim<z Advent.}. 

" Formerly, when we were seduced by the Pope, men willingly followed 
good works ; but now all their study is to get everything to themselves, by 
exactions, pillage, theft, lying, and usury " (Serm. Dom. impost Trinit.). 

" With regard to our Germany, it is evident, according to the great 
light of the Gospel, that it is clean possessed by the devil. Our youths 
are impudent and unruly, and will no longer submit to education ; the 
old men are loaded with sins of avarice, usury, and many others that 
may not be told" (Luth. in Gen. xxiii. 9, torn. i. p. 2451). 

CALVIN says : ." When so many thousand men, having thrown off the 
Papal authority, eagerly enrolled themselves under the Gospel, how few, 
think you, have repented of their vices ? Nay, what has the majority 
shown to have been their desire, than that, having shaken off the yoke of 
superstition, they might launch out the more freely into every kind of 
lasciviousness ? " (Ut excusso superstitionum jugo, solutius in omnem 
lasciviam diffluerent. De Scandalis, torn. ix. p. 71, ed. Amstelod, 1667). 

WlLlBALD PiRCKHElMER, 1 A.D. 1528 : " O splendid Christianity! I 

1 HALLAM says: "Munzer and Knipperdoling, with the whole brood of 
Anabaptist fanatics, were the legitimate brood of Luther's early doctrine. And 



( 6i ) 

know, and it is the truth, that even unbelievers were not guilty of such 
fraud and crime as these who call themselves ' Evangelicals.' For the 
fact is evident to be seen, that there is now neither faith nor hope, no fear 
of God, no love of one's neighbour ; but there is a rejection of mercy and 
goodness, of art and of learning ; nor do they now think of aught save 
the gratification of the body," &c. (Epist. to Tscherte, in Reliquien von 
Albrecht Ditrer, Nuremberg, 1828, p. .168). 

BUCER, a prominent " Reformer," also says : " The greater part of 
the people seem only to have embraced the gospel in order to shake off 
the yoke of discipline and the obligation of fasting, penance, &c., which 
lay upon them in Popery, and to live at their pleasure, enjoying their lusts 
and lawless appetites without control. Hence they lend a willing ear to 
the doctrine that we are saved by faith alone, and not by works, having 
no relish for them " (De Regno Christi, lib. i. c. 4). 

ERASMUS wrote, after sufficient experience of the " Reformation : "- 
" Look around on this ' Evangelical ' people, and observe whether there 
be less luxury, debauchery, and avarice amongst them than among those 
you so hate. Show me any one whom that new gospel has changed 
from a drunkard to a sober man, from a cruel to a gentle, from a greedy 
to a liberal, from a malignant to an amiable, from an impure to a 
chaste one. / will show you many who have become worse through 
following it" (Circumspice populum ilium evangelicum ; . . . et prefer 
mihi quern istud evangelium ex commessatore sobrium, ex feroci man- 
suetum, ex rapaci liberalem, ex maledico benedicum, ex impudico redid- 
derit verecundum. Ego tibi multos ostendam qui facti sunt seipsis 
deteriores. Epist. ad Vulturium Neocomnni). 

" Those whom I had once known to be chaste, sincere, and without 
fraud, I found, after they had embraced this sect, to be licentious in their 
conversation, gamblers, neglectful of prayer, passionate, vain, as spiteful 
as serpents, and lost to the feelings of human nature. I speak from 
experience " (Ouos antea noveram puros, candidos, et fuci ignaros, 
eosdem vidi, ubi sectae se dedissent, loqui ca?pissime de puellis, luisse 
alcam, abjecisse preces, impatientissimos omnis injurire, vanos, viperinos 

even if we set these aside, it is certain that we find no testimonies to any reform of 
manners in the countries that embraced it. . . . This great practical deficiency in 
the Lutheran reformation is confessed by their own writers. And it is attested 
by a remarkable letter of Wilibald Pirckheimer, announcing the death of Albert 
Durer to a correspondent at Vienna in 1528. ... In this he takes occasion to 
inveigh against the bad conduct of the Reformed party at Nuremberg, and seems 
as indignant at the Lutherans as he had ever been against Popery, though without 
losing his hatred for the latter. . . . The witness he bears to the dishonest and 
dissolute manners which had accompanied the introduction of Lutheranism is not 
to be slightly regarded, considering r the respectability of Pirckheimer, and his 
known co-operation with the first reform " (Hist, of Literat. of Europe, part i. ch. 
iv. sect. 60 note, 6th ed.). 



( 62 ) 

in moribus, ac prorsus hominem exuisse. Expertus loquor. Epist. ad 
Fratres Infer. Germanics, Colon., 1561). 

" The letters of Erasmus," says HALLAM, " are a perpetual commen- 
tary on the mischiefs with which the Reformation, in his opinion, was 
accompanied " (Hist, of Literat. of Europe, pt. i. ch. vi. sect. 8, note ; 
vol. i. p. 361). 

Mr. BARING GOULD (an Anglican) says : " Even in Luther's time 
the proclamation of free justification by faith only led to grave disorders, 
and frightened back into Catholicism many who wished the Reforma- 
tion success. One instance alone will serve to show the results of the 
doctrine of Solifidianism. In Ditmarchen, Neocorus tells us, chastity 
and innocence were so remarkable, that the little principality went by the 
name of the Land of Mary. In 1532 it was Lutheranised. Nine years 
after, in 1541, the Reformer Nicholas Boje complained that * fornica- 
tion, adultery, and usury were practised in a way unusual even among 
Jews and heathens, and had so gained the upper-hand that it was 
impossible to supply any remedy by sermons.' . . . 

" There is abundant evidence to show that wherever the Reformation 
in Germany prevailed, the moral tone sank several degrees" (BARING 
GOULD'S Germany % Past and Present, vol. ii. pp. 175-178, Lond. 
1879). 

As regards our own country, KING HENRY VIII. declared, in his last 
speech to Parliament : " The Bible itself is turned into wretched 
rhymes, sung and jangled in every alehouse and tavern. I am sure that 
charity was never so faint among ye, virtue never at a lower ebb, and 
God Himself never less honoured or worse served in Christendom " 
(Sxow's Annals, and COLLIER'S Ecclesiast. Hist., part ii. book iii. 
p. 218). 

Bishop LATIMER, in his seventh sermon before Edward VI., said : 
" I never saw, surely, so little discipline as is nowadays. Men will be 
masters : they will be masters and no disciples. Alas ! where is this 
discipline now in England? The people regard no discipline; they be 
without all order. Where they should give place, they will not stir one inch: 
... if a man say anything unto them, they regard it not. Men, the more 
they know, the worse they be : it is truly said ' Scientia inflat,' knowledge 
maketh us proud, and causeth us to forget all, and set away discipline. 
Siirely in Popery they had a reverence; but now we have none at all. I 
never saw the like ! . . . What blasphemy do we daily commit ; what 
little regard have we to Christ's blessed Passion ! " (Serin, xiii., Parker 
Society edit., Cambridge, 1844, P- 230). * 

1 In his " Sermon of the Plough," preached in 1548, Latimer says : There is 
in London as much pride, covetousness, cruelty, oppression, and superstition as 
ever there was in Nebo. . . . London was never so ill as it is noiu. In times fast 



BERNARD GILPIN declares that in Edward's (VI.) reign, " More blind 
superstition, ignorance, and infidelity were promulgated in England than 
ever were under the Bishop of Rome. The realm was in danger of be- 
coming more barbarous than Scythia " (Sermons on the Crymcs of the 
Realm, ap. BURKE, Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, vol. ii. p. 
296). 

BRADFORD says : "All men may see that immorality in its foulest 
forms, pride, dishonesty, unmercifulness, scoffing at religion and virtue, 
and a desire to oppress and crush down the poor, far surpassed at this 
time anything that ever before occurred in the realm" (On the Condition 
of Public Morals and the People's Povertie]. And in a letter to Arch- 
bishop Cranmer, the same author says : " A heavy curse seems to have 
fallen on the people ; I know not what to think of it. Desolation over- 
shadows this land of ours, that was once so prosperous and contented" 
(ap. BURKE, p. 297). 

STRYPE says : "About this time the nation grew infamous for the 
crime of adultery. It began among the nobility and better classes, and so 
spread at length among the inferior sort of people. Noblemen would 
frequently put away their wives and marry others, if they liked another 
woman better, or were like to obtain wealth by her. And they would 
sometimes pretend their former wives to be false to them, and so be 
divorced, and marry again those whom they might fancy. . . . These 
adulteries and divorces increased very much ; yea, and marrying again 
without any divorce at all, it became a great scandal to the realm and 
to the religion professed in it. This state of morals gave much sorrow 
and trouble to good men to see it, insomuch that they thought neces- 
sary to move for an Act of Parliament to punish adultery with death. 
This Latimer, in a sermon preached in the year 1550, signified to the 
king : * For the love of God, take an order for marriage here in England ' " 
(STRYPE'S Memorials of Cranmer, vol. i. pp. 293, 294). 

CAMDEN states that " sacrilegious avarice ravenously invaded Church 
livings, colleges, chantries, hospitals, and places dedicated to the poor, 
as things superfluous. Ambition and emulation among the nobility, pre- 
sumption and disobedience among the common people, grew so extravagant 
that England seemed to be in a downright frenzy " ( Chronicle on Edward's 
Reign, ap. BURKE, op. cit. p. 305). 

men were full of pity and compassion ; but now there is no pity. In London their 
brother may lie in the streets for cold, and perish with hunger between stock and 
stock. I know not what to call it. In time past, when a rich man died, they 
were wont to help the poor scholars at the universities with exhibition : they 
would bequeath great sums of money to the relief of the poor. In those days 
they maintained Papists, and gave them livings. But now, when God's Word is 
brought to light, none helpeth the scholar nor the poor "... (ap. Dixox, 
Hist, of the Church of Eng. from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction, vol. ii. 
iSSi, p. 489). 



( 64 ) 

Bishop BARLOW wrote in 1553 : "Mark it substantially in cities and 
towns where ye see the people the most rifest and most busy to prate of 
the gospel, whether they be or be not as great usurers, deceivers of their 
neighbours, blasphemous swearers, evil speakers, and given to all vices 
as deeply as ever they were. This I am sure of, and dare boldly affirm, 
that sith the time of this new contentious learning the dread of God is 
greatly quenched, and charitable compassion sore abated" (A Dialogue on 
the Lutheran Faccions, 1553). 

PARKHURST writes to Bullinger in 1562: " Religion is in the same 
state among us as heretofore. . .a Almost all are covetous, all love gifts. 
There is no truth, no liberality, no knowledge of God. Men have broken 
forth to curse and to lie, and murder and steal, and commit adultery,'' 
c. (Zurich Letters, Parker Soc. edit., Let. xlvi.). 

For copious proofs of the generally infamous character of the Protes- 
tant clergy in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, see Mr. BUCKLE'S article in 
FRAZER'S MAGAZINE for August 1867. This writer remarks that " during 
the 'whole of the sixteenth century the situation of the clergy went on 
degenerating;''' 1 and that "the proofs which are extant of the gross ignor- 
ance of the clergy in the reign of Elizabeth are such as would stagger the 
most incredulous, even if they were not confirmed by every description of 
historical testimony that has come down to us." x 

Present Religious Condition of Germany and England. 

Much evidence on this subject has been accumulated by Mr. MARSHALL 
in his Developments of Protestantism (Richardson, 1849), and in the last 
chapter of his work on Christian Missions (2d edit., Longmans & Co.). 

GERMANY. Mr. DEWAR, English chaplain at Hamburg, writes in 1844 : 
" Religious indifference has pervaded the mass of the people. It is a fact 
which every traveller who has visited the shores "of Germany has remarked, 
that there is no regard for the ordinances of religion. In Hamburg and 
its suburbs there are five parish churches and two smaller churches. 
The congregation attending all the services of all these never, I am told, 
amount to 3000 in number, so that the remainder of the enormous popu- 
lation, amounting to 150,000, pays no manner of worship to their God. 

1 For the history of the " Reformation " in this country (which Lord MACAULAY 
characterises as " a mere political job, commenced by Henry, the murderer of 
his wives ; continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother ; and completed 
by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest " Essay on Hallam's Constitutional Hist . ), 
the reader may be referred to the admirable Six Historical Lectures by the late 
Dr. J. WATERWORTH, to vol. i. of the Clifton Tracts, and to Dr. F. G. LEES' 
Church iinder Queen Elizabeth. The early vols. also of The History of tJie Eng- 
lish Church from the Abolition of the Ro.man Jurisdiction, by Canon DIXON 
(Protestant), and Mr. BURKE'S Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty (3 vols. 
8vo), promise to exhibit the results of the latest and most exhaustive researches 
into the history of that event. 



( 65 ) 

. . . And Hamburg in these matters does not furnish a low standard when 
compared with the rest of Germany. In Berlin, for instance, there is a 
parish which contains 54,000 inhabitants, and the annual number of com- 
municants is 1000 less than in the largest parish of Hamburg, while the 
population is one-third larger" (German Protestantism, Oxford, 1844). 

Mr. SAMUEL LAING, a Scotch Presbyterian, says : " If the question 
is reduced to what really are its terms in Germany l at present Catholi- 
cism, with all its superstitions, errors, and idolatry, or to no religion at 
all, that is to say, not avowed infidelity, but the most torpid apathy, indif- 
ference, and neglect of all religion it may be doubted if the latter condi- 
tion of a people is preferable. The Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches 
in Germany and Switzerland are in reality extinct. The sense of reli- 
gion, its influence on the habits, observances, and life of the people, is 
alive only in the Roman Catholic population " (Notes on the German 
Catholic Church, Lond., 1845, P- I 45) < Compare the same author's Notes 
of a Traveller, ist series, chaps, ix. and xvii. 

Dr. SCHWABE writes in 1870: "The ancient ties of the Protestant 
Church are broken. Spirit and strength are lacking to replace them by 
new ones. At no period has the Church commanded less and given less 
satisfaction to man. Statistics show how far this alienation has pro- 
ceeded. Of 630,000 Protestants, 11,900, viz., nearly 2 per cent., attend 
church on the Sundays ; and amongst them 2225 go to the Dom, merely 
for a musical treat. Religious indifference appears no less conspicuously 
in the fact that ou't of 23,969 interments, 3777, or nearly 15 per cent., 
only, are attended by 'religious services" (Betrachtiingen iiber die Volk- 
seele, Berlin, 1870). 

The Churches provide accommodation for only 25,000 out of 800,000 

1 It should be observed that infidelity in foreign countries whether Protestant 
or Catholic is entirely the offspring of the English Deism of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. M. VILLEMAIN declares that the French philosophy of the 
last century owed its origin to the English writers Herbert, Hobbes, Shaftes- 
bury, Toland, Collins, Woolston, Bolingbroke, Hume, &c., and the same may be 
said of the Rationalism and Pantheism of Germany. This is acknowledged by 
Protestant writers. Thus, the QUARTERLY REVIEW (Jan. 1861, p. 288) speaks of 
"our old English Deists, who were the true fathers of French Atheism and German 
unbelief." 

Dr. HAROLD BROWNE says : "In the latter half of the eighteenth century the 
Deism which had been troubling England had passed through the alembic of 
French scepticism, and now settled down in a shower of Rationalism on Germany. 
The Rationalism ofPaulus, the Pantheism of Hegel, the historical myth of Strauss, 
derive their pedigree from the writings of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Toland, 
Tindal, and other English Deists, . . . through the school of Rousseau and 
Voltaire. ... It was this special principle [of the English Deists] which passed 
through the various forms of French infidelity, German Rationalism and Pantheism, 
and which has been brought back to us as the highest result of modern dis- 
coveries in science and mental philosophy " (Aids to Faith, pp. 295, 296). 

E 



( 66 ) 

souls in Berlin, yet they are all but empty on Sundays (Religous Thought 
in Germany, reprinted from Times, 1870, p. 27). 

Mr. BARING GOULD writes in 1879 : " Throughout Germany 14 out of 
loo persons attend church on Sunday ; in the town of Darmstadt only 
3.3 in a hundred ; in the towns of Mainz (among the Protestants), 5.1 ; 
Giessen, 5.7 ; Worms, 6.3. In Darmstadt, out of 100 marriages, 34.5 per 
cent., in Offenbach 48.6, in Worms 44, are celebrated before the registrar 
alone, without religious service ; burial without religious service through- 
out Germany in 29.6 out of 100 inhabitants ; in Darmstadt, 60 per cent." 
(Germany, Past and Present, vol. ii. p. 164). See also the work entitled 
Home Life in Germany. 

ENGLAND. W. J. CONYBEARE, speaking of "the infidelity now so 
general among the best-instructed portion of the labouring classes," 
says : " It is a melancholy fact that the men who make our steam- 
engines and railway carriages, our presses and telegraphs, the furniture 
of our houses and the clothing of our persons, have now in a fearful pro- 
portion renounced all faith in Christianity. They regard the Scripture as 
a forgery and religion as priestcraft, and are living without God in the 
world. The revelations of the late census have shown that in England 
alone there are more than five millions of persons who absent themselves 
entirely from religious worship " (CONYBEARE's Essays, Ecclesiastical 
and Social, p. 99). 

Canon MONEY, of Deptford, said at the Plymouth Church Congress in 
5876: However the sections of the working class might differ in in- 
telligence, in sobriety, in honesty, they nearly all agreed in this they 
were alienated from Christianity. Barely five per cent, attended public 
worship? 

The Rev. T. HUGO added, that "the masses of Lancashire and oj 
London were as heathen as those of whom St. Paul drew a picture in 
immortal though dreadful colours. ... He knew the mobs of London 
and Lancashire well, and he gave them his word of honour as a Christian 
priest, that there was no difference between them and the people whom St. 
Paul portrayed. Then, as a matter of course, they had to look at these 
masses as simply heathen" (Church Times, Oct. 13, 1876). 

The BISHOP OF ROCHESTER, in a sermon preached in the Chapel 
Royal, St James's, laments "that dense, and coarse, and almost brutal 
ignorance, in which the toiling masses of the people who have outgrown 
the Church's grasp are permitted to live and die, of all that touches their 
salvation and explains their destiny. To hundreds of thousands of our 
fellow-countrymen, Almighty God is practically an unknown Being, except 
as the substance of a hideous oath : Jesus Christ, in His redeeming love 
and human sympathy, as distant as a fixed star" (Good Words, Jan. 1880, 
p. 61). 



WHITAKER'S ALMANACK gives the following LIST OF PROTESTANT 
SECTS NOW EXISTING IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. 



Advent Christians. 
Advents, The. 
Apostolics. 

Arminian New Society. 
Baptists. 

Baptized Believers. 
Believers in Christ. 

Believers in the Divine Visitation of 
Joanna Southcote, Prophetess of 
Exeter. 
Believers Meeting in the Name of the 

Lord Jesus Christ. 
Bible Christians. 
Bible Defence Association. 
Brethren. 

Calvinists and Welsh Calvinists. 
Calvinistic Baptists. 

Catholic Apostolic Church [Irvingites]. 
Chapels of other Wesleyans than those 

enumerated. 
Christians Owning no Name but the 

Lord Jesus. 
Christians who object to be otherwise 

designated. 
Christian Believers. 

Christian Brethren. 

Christian Disciples. 

Christian Eliasites. 

Christian Israelites. 

Christian Mission. 

Christian Teetotallers. 

Christian Temperance Men. 

Christian Unionists. 

Christadelphians. 

Church of England. 1 

Church of Scotland. 

Church of Christ. 

Church of the People. 

Church of Progress. 

Congregational Temperance Free 
Church. 

Countess of Huntingdon's Connection. 



Covenanters. 

Coventry Mission Band. 

Danish Lutherans. 

Disciples in Christ. 

Disciples of Jesus Christ. 

Eastern Orthodox Greek Church. 

Eclectics. 

Episcopalian Dissenters. 

Evangelical Free Church. 

Evangelical Mission. 

Evangelical Unionists. 

Followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Free Catholic Christian Church. 

Free Christians. 

Free Christian*Association. 

Free Church (of Scotland). 

Free Church (Episcopal). 

Free Church of England. 

Free Evangelical Christians. 

Free Grace Gospel Christians. 

Free Gospel and Christian Brethren. 

Free Gospel Church. 

Free Gospellers. 

Free Methodists. 

Free Union Church. 

General Baptist. 

General Baptist New Connection. 

German Evangelical Community. 

German Lutherans. 

German Roman Catholics. 

Glassites. 

Glory Band. 

Greek Catholic. 

Halifax Psychological Society. 

Hallelujah Band. 

Hope Mission. 

Humanitarians. 

Independents. 

Independent Methodists. 

Independent Religious Reformers. 

Independent Unionists. 

Inghamites. 



1 Lord MACAULAY well observed that the religion of the Church of England 
itself "is in fact a bundle of religious systems without number, . . . a hundred 
sects battling within one Church''' (Essay on Church and State). 



( 68 ) 



Israelites. 

Latter-Day Saints. 

Lutherans. 

Methodist Reform Union. 

Missionaries. 

Modern Methodists. 

Moravians. 

Mormons. 

Newcastle Sailors' Society. 

New Church. 

New Connection General Baptists. 

New Connection Wesleyans. 

New Jerusalem Church. 

New Methodist. 

Old Baptists. 

Open Baptists. 

Order of St. Austin, The 

Orthodox Eastern Church. 

Particular Baptists. 

Peculiar People. 

Plymouth Brethren. 

Polish Society. 

Portsmouth Mission. 

Presbyterian Church in England. 

Presbyterian Church of England. 

Presbyterian Baptists. 

Primitive Congregation. 

Primitive Free Qhurch. 

Primitive Methodists. 

Progressionists. 

Protestant Members of the Church of 

England. 
Protestants adhering to Articles I to 

1 8, but rejecting Ritual. 
Protestant Trinitarians. 
Protestant Union. 
Providence. 
Quakers. 
Ranters. 

Rational Christians. 
Reformers. 

Reformed Church of England. 
Reformed Episcopal Church. 
Reformed Presbyterians or Covenanters. 
Recreative Religionists. 



Refuge Methodists. 

Reform Free Church Wesleyan Me- 
thodists. 

Reformed Presbyterians. 

Revivalists. 

Revival Band. 

Salem Society. 

Sandemanians. 

Scottish Episcopal Church. 

Scotch Baptists. 

Second Advent Brethren. 

Secularists. 

Separatists (Protestants). 

Seven-Day Baptists. 

Society of the New Church. 

Spiritual Church. 

Spiritualists. 

Strict Baptists. 

S vvedenborgians. 

Temperance Methodists. 

Testimony Congregational Church. 

Trinitarians. 

Union Baptists. 

Union Churchmen. 

Union Congregationalists. 

Union Free Church. 

Unionists. 

Unitarians. 

Unitarian Baptists. 

Unitarian Christians. 

United Christian Church. 

United Free Methodist Church. 

United Brethren or Moravians. 

United Presbyterians. 

Universal Christians. 

Unsectarian. 

Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. 

Welsh Free Presbyterians. 

Welsh Wesleyan Methodists. 

Wesleyans. 

Wesleyan Methodist Association. 

Wesleyan Reformers. 

Wesleyan Reform Glory Band. 

Working Man's Evangelistic Mission 
Chapels.